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nobody is making a blanket statement of one always being better than the other (except seemingly you).
your statement below is just ridiculous:
"This argument really comes down to ownership vs. non-ownership, and yes, hands down it is always in one's best interest to own "
Well, yes, I should have added (and I believe I did, somewhere else in this mess of a post) IF YOU HAVE THE MEANS TO RESPONSIBILY, FINANCIALLY DO SO. And I do stand by that statement. But I acknowledge it's true, not every does.
Well, yes, I should have added (and I believe I did, somewhere else in this mess of a post) IF YOU HAVE THE MEANS TO RESPONSIBILY, FINANCIALLY DO SO. And I do stand by that statement. But I acknowledge it's true, not every does.
that capitalized and highlighted portion was there but i left it out because it makes no difference. assuming a person is making a responsible financial decision, there are still times where renting is a better option than buying. the fact that you are making such a blanket statement makes it very easy to point out how silly it is.
When moving from outside the area it can be a good idea to rent for 6 months to a year because you don't know if you will like living there. If you buy and hate it (this happens a lot more than people think) you could find yourself desperate to sell and move. This is not a good position to be in financially or emotionally.
Well, yes, I should have added (and I believe I did, somewhere else in this mess of a post) IF YOU HAVE THE MEANS TO RESPONSIBILY, FINANCIALLY DO SO. And I do stand by that statement. But I acknowledge it's true, not every does.
We lived in Los Angeles for 9 months in 2007/8 due to a fixed term contract with a company there. We had the means to buy at debt ratios better than what most people would call responsible. You seriously think we would have been better off (in any sense) if we bought, after all: "hands down it is always in one's best interest to own"?
We lived in Los Angeles for 9 months in 2007/8 due to a fixed term contract with a company there. We had the means to buy at debt ratios better than what most people would call responsible. You seriously think we would have been better off (in any sense) if we bought, after all: "hands down it is always in one's best interest to own"?
she is just being silly. i see people listing their homes now for 50k+ less than what they paid for them. im not sure what they will do when they owe a big chunk of money after the sale but im pretty sure they would have been better off had they rented instead of bought. with all the foreclosures, unemployment, other economic issues i dont see how someone can be so silly as to say that buying is always better than renting.
What strikes me as odd is: all the renters I know have a long term goal of eventually ownthing their own home. Yet NONE of the homeowners I know dream of one day giving up their asset so they can rent. Which lends to the theory:
Renting -> Owning = UPGRADE!
Owning -> Renting = DOWNGRADE!
So which would be better, assuming both are responsibly possible....?
What strikes me as odd is: all the renters I know have a long term goal of eventually ownthing their own home. Yet NONE of the homeowners I know dream of one day giving up their asset so they can rent. Which lends to the theory:
Renting -> Owning = UPGRADE!
Owning -> Renting = DOWNGRADE!
So which would be better, assuming both are responsibly possible....?
is this supposed to be some kind of well thought out point? your line of thinking is perfectly fine until actual hard data and realistic thinking comes into play. just because people want to own rather than rent, doesnt mean thats really whats best for them.
What strikes me as odd is: all the renters I know have a long term goal of eventually ownthing their own home. Yet NONE of the homeowners I know dream of one day giving up their asset so they can rent. Which lends to the theory:
Renting -> Owning = UPGRADE!
Owning -> Renting = DOWNGRADE!
So which would be better, assuming both are responsibly possible....?
You obviously don't know that great a variety of people then.
A *lot* of people sold in order to rent in the 2004-2006 timeframe, when they noticed that home prices had gotten completely out of whack with the rest of reality. So they could get a much higher standard of living by renting a much nicer place for less than they were paying to own (and pocket a huge profit on the sale since they bought in the 90s) So there's an example of owning->renting.
Anyone who doesn't rent in between owning when they move to an area they haven't spent much time in before is being foolish, so there's another example of owning->renting.
No one is arguing that renting is always better. Everyone else is arguing that there are times that renting makes sense, and times that owning makes sense. You are the one with the one size fits all position, stating that owning is always better.
Since renting makes more sense earlier on - while deciding where to live, before having children, etc, etc and owning makes more sense later on in life - when you know where you want to settle down long term, when you have children for whom stability is a good thing. It follows that the rent->own transition would be much more common than the own->rent transition (since most cases or own->rent are followed by rent->own anyway - the first and second paragraph examples are both of that type).
For some people renting will make sense for almost all their lives - someone who moves around chasing work a lot, someone who has a job that subsidizes rent, etc. Most people, however, will spend most of their lives in one area and in one house in which case buying is likely the best option (outside of real estate bubbles, again).
Renting and buying should, from a financial point of view, be almost equivalent. Renting should cost a little more, while owning will have much much higher transaction costs. So renting will make sense when you might move soon, buying makes sense when you are likely to stay put for 7 years (or so).
Right this minute, renting has the edge on buying so the line has shifted a little. That's changing pretty quickly though - the housing bubble saw price:rent ratios get way out of whack but they are returning to sane levels. Note that that doesn't mean renting is universally better - it just means right at this moment in time people who would have been better off owning in say 1960 are better of renting now (since these things tend to overshoot, at some point soon owning will have the edge and some people who would have been better off renting in 1960 will be better of owning). 1960 isn't magical - I'm just picking a random year not during a real estate bubble.
A lot of people who were better of renting in 2005 are better off owning right now, to pick a different year to compare, one in which a housing bubble makes the difference.
You're also arguing from a "want" basis, which has very little to do with "best". I want to play video games and eat ribs all day, doing so certainly wouldn't be "better" for me.
What strikes me as odd is: all the renters I know have a long term goal of eventually ownthing their own home. Yet NONE of the homeowners I know dream of one day giving up their asset so they can rent. Which lends to the theory:
Renting -> Owning = UPGRADE!
Owning -> Renting = DOWNGRADE!
So which would be better, assuming both are responsibly possible....?
I notice that you still haven't addressed the points that have been made repeatedly about transaction costs making ownership a bad deal unless you stay put for sufficiently long.
Instead, you keep diverting with nonsense, and this is no exception.
Obviously, acquiring assets is good, and losing assets is bad. The fallacy above is that you equate renting with losing assets and buying with acquiring them. But you don't need to lose assets to rent, and you may on a net basis ultimately lose assets by buying.
For example, my parents rented out a place when they moved temporarily for a yr. Wasn't a downgrade, no net loss of assets.
Likewise, many people bought and lost money because they had to move at an inopportune time. They would have ended up with more assets if they'd rented.
How can it be a logical argument when every person's situation is different...? Each side could dream up dozens of scenarios whete it would make more sense for one vs. the other. It's impossible to prove that one is absolutely "better" than the other, across the board. There is nothing logical about it. I think it's a ridiculous argument with no chance of resolution, but how does that make me have "no concern for reality", excatly...?
The thing is, though, we acknowledge that many times it is better to buy than rent. What we are saying that you refuse to understand is that sometimes it is better to rent than buy, no matter how much money or how financially secure a person is.
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