Renting or Buying

One of the biggest decisions you can make is whether to buy a house or simply pay rent.  There is certainly an emotional aspect to both sides of this decision, but I want to take that out of the equation for a bit so that we can take a quick look at the actual math.  Because rent is a flat amount paid every month and buying a house comes with unforeseen costs and expenses, it can certainly be difficult to figure out which makes more sense. The housing market has been up and down over the past 15 years with some major downturns as well as significant upturns which can make people unsure about how solid an investment a house is these days.  

Given that the housing market is taking on a bit of a yo-yo pattern, it can be difficult to know where to start in buying a house.  To that end, I wanted to share a calculator put out by the New York Times which serves as a great starting place for those making the decision between buying and renting a home.  This calculator does a good job of laying out the foundational costs of home buying and taking into account opportunity cost of buying a house or investing the down payment cost. This calculator can be found here on the New York Times website by following this link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html

If you have any questions about buying a home or how that expense fits into the rest of your financial plans, please reach out and we can walk through this major decision together.