Is It Better to Rent or Buy? The perennial question to decide between buying a home and renting is one of the biggest financial decisions that many of us make. Tara Bernard writes on The New York Times: “More American households are renting, across all income levels and generations, for different reasons. But when homeownership is the centerpiece of the American dream, most of us have internalized certain ideals: Buying a home builds equity, putting you on the fast track to building wealth. Renting, by contrast, is essentially throwing money to the wind.” But with renters now accounting for 37 percent of all households, renters can come out ahead if they’re disciplined enough to put the saving money from renting into investments. A HelloWallet study concluded that a hypothetical, moderate-income family will often end up with more net wealth if they rent versus own over the 10 years from 2013 to 2022. On the other hand, buying a home makes sense the longer you stay. After inflation home prices in the United States have risen just 0.37 percent annualized for the last 126 years. (nytimes.com)
Which Is Better: To Buy or Rent a Home?
