Rent vs Own

Question

Rent vs Own

What is the /biz opinion on this?

Boomers can't shut up about renting is throwing money out the window but is it really? When you own a house you need to pay tax and maintanance (which is another mortgage in terms of cost), illiquid, flexibility is low.

And this is if you own a house, if you own a condo the maintanance is somewhat smaller, however returns are generally worse than a house. The biggest issue seems to be you don't even own the land so all you own is a depreciating asset for which you hope the inflation and population increase will offest that building depreciation in terms of price.

Especially in todays day and age its since even if you invest in a rental property you are generally cashflow negative with the hopes of price appretiation. Which often comes but not always like in Canada right now. Not to mention that you have to deal with the tennants which could become a nightmare....

Does it make sense to rent and invest the money you save from taxes and maintanance (assuming that rent and mortgage payment is rougly the same) or is housing really the key to american dream like boomers say?

financially it's better to rent and sock the difference into crypto/stocks. However renting means uncertainty such as the landlord randomly deciding to sell your house. Unless you want to live in some gay apartment this is always a risk.

depends entirely on where you are and the local circumstances as well as your intentions 3-5 years out.

implying the average person <35 has a choice

Yeah gl on getting that $300k deposit when real wages haven't gone up since like 2015 and cost of living in general has skyrocketed

If you think its bad now, just wait, immigration is going parabolic and the situation will only become harder and harder

By the 2030's most people will have accepted its over.

Inheritance

They will introduce a ton of new inheritance taxes in the coming years to ensure boomer wealth goes straight to the state instead of millennials

Only buy when you need to when raising a family. Otherwise rent for the most part

in practice you shouldn't be considering "buying" a house unless you can buy it outright. The idea of getting a mortgage for the absolute maximum you can squeeze monthly is part of the problem. At the least you should be putting 50% down on the purchase price or more.

You don't own a house if you have a mortgage you own a liability that requires you to come up with a large income figure each month to service it.

my plan is to stack money with my wfh job and buy a $120k piece of shit home in my rural flyover town and then keep that job for as long as possible. if i get laid off ill just work at a warehouse for $18/hour and health insurance benefits, because my house will be paid off in full.

its fucking over for anyone who cant pull this off. they will be paying off a $3500/month mortgage for the next 30 years or paying mr. shekeblatowitzberg $2700/month for 1 bedroom that goes up 10% every year.

i rent an apartment for 1600 a month where an equivalent condo or townhome in this area would be like 3k mortgage

Why not charge more? I rent out around military towns and I adjust my rent to my target group's military housing allowance. Renters will always come.

IT'S DIFFERENT FOR EVERYONE
MAKE A SPRESDSHEET

*rentoids. Was a typo.

This, it’s very location dependent.

In my case buying worked out since I did it before covid and locked in a low 2’s interest rate. Renting the same house would cost me probably 1k more than I pay now all in, including tax and maintenance. And my house appreciated by 200k since early 2020.

But there are more headaches and time sinks with ownership. However not having to move constantly or worry about rent going up is nice.

If you’re very lazy and/or prefer to move a lot then renting is better

I don't know that this is true
if you put 40k down payment in a 400k place in some college town and then rent it out for 3k-4k a month to a bunch of students, you can cover your mortgage and own the place outright after 15 years
your commitment to the place was $40k but you end up owning a $400k property that after 15 years is probably closer to $600k
yeah there is some work to be done and expenses but overall you're looking at a 10x if you select your market and tenants correctly

They will introduce a ton of new inheritance taxes in the coming years to ensure boomer wealth goes straight to the state instead of millennials

I wish, but no. Boomers might not care about younger generations as a whole, but they do want their individual kids to "carry on their legacy".

you don't own a house you own a liability

jewish

boomers are spending their money like it's on fire. consumer goods RV's, vacations, expensive dinners and wine, etc. That peaked a few years ago but it will maintain at high levels for years to come. the rest will be spent on life-extension and full service nursing homes. Boomers are certain to be reverse-mortgaging any houses they own outright through whatever scheme is available to them.

Welcome to the Jewish system where money isn't real and credit rules.

Being alive is a liability

dude just rent it out to college students 18-22 year olds are typically very quiet and respectful of property

KEK

And that's not counting inflation, you think the people paying 2008 mortgages are complaining in todays 2025? That's half the debt already paid off

yeah I haven't tried but I assume renting to sophomores is a bad idea
I have a bunch of foreign master and doctoral students living in one of my places
2 asians and 1 german right now. very quiet

not only that elder care and nursing home care is really expensive like 50-100k per month expensive. And they will sue the estate to collect.
Millennials might not get any money after paying for elder care.

Homeowner here.
Just rent while you are young.
Only buy if you are about to have kids.
Landlords are not profiting much off you, the maintenance of the property eats up 80% of the rent and that is before management csts.
This means at most you save 20% on costs by owning, but now own 100% of the risk.

For my situation, renting gets you less square footage per dollar, but the floor is lower (My apartment is 700 sqft but there are zero homes below 1200). A house would have to be 250k for the same payment...250k buys you a burned down house. 300k gets you asbestos, lead paint, no insulation, and completely fucked hvac. 400 is where the houses become viable, and this is double my rent payment. If I liquidate my brokerage and pay cash, I will get less returns...even if I rented out rooms. I can make the math work when I have enough money to quit my job completely and then go build a house and do all the work myself.

Just experienced this. Perfect house for really decent rent on the waterfront, only concession was landlord wanted to retain access to the (detached) garage to keep storing some shit and to occasionally use the backyard access to the beach for family outings, with 24hr notice. Perfectly reasonable. Great situation for both of us. Then he got the itch to buy a different waterfront house that was falling into the ocean because he thought it was mispriced and he could do a teardown, build a new house on it and sell it for like $200k profit, so he decided to sell the house I'm in to cash fund the purchase because he couldn't get a conforming loan for the falling-into-the-ocean house. He tried to kick me out with two weeks notice so he could make it more presentable to buyers, I told him 90 days is the minimum notice for the case where the lease is being terminated to sell the house and I showed him the law in question, so he grudgingly relented. So he listed the house for an insane price with me still in it and I had to grit my teeth and let random tire kickers into my place for 3 months while the house went stale on the market. I kept the place messy, smelly, and dirty (easy to do when you have a 140lb dog) to minimize the chance of someone actually wanting the place. Finally at the end of three months I cash offered him $150k below his ask and he took it because he needed the cash fast or else he'd lose his earnest money on the falling-into-the-ocean house.

So now I own the house outright and it's nice and all but I still would have preferred to keep renting at the price we agreed upon and keep that money riding in btc/stocks, which was working well for both of us until he went full retard and decided to trade a good sure thing for a wild speculative real estate bet that's going to involve vast amounts of capital outlay, time, effort, stress, and risk to see a profit if he ever ends up seeing one. Good luck I guess, and good riddance.

FUCK RENTOIDS, RENTHOGS, AND RENTARDS LMFAO

Landlord handles repairs

Boomers might not care about younger generations as a whole, but they do want their individual kids to "carry on their legacy

Parents and In-Laws already told the wife and I that they're gonna rent out their houses after they retire and downsize to a single floor smaller home. Houses will split among siblings after they pass away and all of them are thinking about either selling or renting it too.

Obviously an anecdote, but I can only imagine other people with siblings are in the same boat where they see the family home as nothing more but an investment.

Becoming an indentured servant is not appealing to me. But everyone chases a finite number of houses with credit rather than money on-hand, which keeps all prices sky-high.
Since I'm not willing to enter into indentured servitude, I'm forced to compete against other peoples credit with my savings. So in short, I'll never actually own a house.

Anybody has any idea about owning and renting out condos/apartments? Sure no land but seems like less maintenance...

Home owner here. Owning is better IF

You can fix anything that breaks. Can you?

Drywall

Landscape

Wire electricity

Plumb

HVAC

If yes, go for it. If not, you better have a lot of money saved up for when shit goes wrong, which it always will.

You can always do what my parents and grandparents do

Just never fix anything, and still have the house valued at multi-millions of dollars because of the location of where the house is situated

And it really isnt that serious anyway

Plus broken down crack downs in these boomer suburbs still sell for millions of dollars because developers want it.

Why not charge more?

too much apartment supply

Landlord here. I was born into it and manage 9 apartment buildings with my father.

First things first, unless you're willing to do all your own maintenance, repairs, bookkeeping, and management (taking calls, etc) you are going to have VERY low profit margins. Are you willing to be the manager and repairman for every single thing and be on call 24/7/365?

If not, you're going to need to charge astronomical rent in order to make profit. We have 40k in lost rent this year and I'm taking home maybe 20k because of that. Can you trim the fat off your lifestyle in off years?

It's not as easy as you think. You get to work for yourself, and you don't work everyday. Lots of time to yourself and no boss, so that's fucking awesome. The point is, it's a lot harder than you think to be a landlord and you're probably going to fail.

How can you just "not fix" a water leak? Do you have any idea what that would do to the place?

Are rentoids taking the piss with how much they manage to break shit? Serious wuestion

Most are awesome. Some are absolute scum of the earth who should have been aborted.

Turn the valve for that pipe off and just don't use that tap.

Jesus Christ. If you know what a shut off valve is, then you can fix the fucking pipe. How lazy can a person be?

GOBLINA

had a major rat infestation and they were tunnelling through the walls but house is still 2 milli and i got cool temporary pets

Well personally I would fix the pipe, I was just answering your question.

Just get a cat bro

Fair enough

In my near decade running the property with my old man, I've only seen two people actually fuck shit up to a weird degree, and neither were malicious.

The first was a lady who rented a two bedroom. She had a kid and the dad was gone. A few months into her tenancy she moves this guy in, and that's when shit gets nuts. They started doing heroin, and I imagine it was a lot of it. I pulled so many needles out of that place it was insane. There were burns on the linoleum under the toilet from (I assume) passing out and with lit cigarettes and dropping them. They had started writing notes on the wall in permanent marker. It was bad bro. I feel so fucking bad for that kid.

The second was a mother and daughter. We didn't realize it at the time, but they were hoarders. They never wanted us to see inside the unit, so they just left the money outside the door. It was the nastiest shit I had ever soon in my life. Literal garbage stacked to the ceiling. A water pipe had burst, and they never called to tell us so we could fix it. Probably because they didn't want us to see inside. It destroyed the entire unit, and the worst part is, they had the bed they both shared directly under the water leak. I'm being 100% serious.