Should you rent or own a home?

Question

Need opinions from consumers who would prefer buying over renting.

Answer 1

Buying a Home is definately better.
Security money can buy.

Answer 2

Hello,

Great thoughts on a long-term decision to buy a home.

By deciding to buy your home, you will do the following:

1. Stop paying someone else's mortgage.
2. Build your own equity.
3. Since both of you put together have a high income, you will book the tax benefits.
4. Fix your monthly payment on living in a home for your lifetime (based on your mortgage).

The Process:
1. Check your credit by yourself. Try to work on any cleanup that you might need to do (like some irregularities in payments or any other incorrect reporting regarding your credit history. A good Mortgage agent should be a great help and be able to do everything for you. But some mortgage agents might use this for a rip-off.
2. See if you can identify your objectives, needs and wants. Like, if you want to live close to downtown, a new home, a nice neighborhood, commute, lifestyle etc.
3. Find a good Realtor who will help you understand your objectives, needs and wants and put them in perspective so that he will help you identify the home you will want to live in.
4. A good Realtor should be able to take care of the entire process. You have to zone into your dream home out of the Millions of properties available out there. You will also have to identify your constraints in terms of finances, having a Realtor will give you all these ideas.
5. It is very important that you pin your requirements, it will make the process of selection very easy.
6. The process itself.
a. Find a Realtor.
b. Find a Mortgage Agent.
c. Find a house.
d. Once selected, make an offer.
e. If the offer is accepted
Order inspections, title reports, HOA docs if it is a PUD / Townhome.
Finalize Mortgage.
Remove Contingencies based on investigations.
Get ready for sign-off.
Sign-off
Do a walkthrough inspection
Fund your mortgage
Get your Keys

You may want to browse on the internet for some more preliminary understanding.

Disclosure: I am a Licensed Realtor with Century 21 in San Jose, CA.

Answer 3

Buying gives you a tax break because you can deduct the mortgage interest. That is the main benefit. With buying you can improve the home and invest and will get the profit out. If the market goes up in real estate you make money if you purchased. And you don't have to deal with landlords, just yourself.
I myself would prefer to rent because i don't want the responsibility of owning a home. And i want the flexibility of being able to move without the burden of selling a house. I don't want to do yardwork or maintenance.

Answer 4

ive always rented and hate it, i like the security you get with owning your own home, the fact that your kids have a permanent home is also a reason i would rather own a home and you have more to give to your children after you die...also with a home you get insurance so you know if something terrible happens then you get reimbursed in some cases where as you rent and it catches on fire most of the time your liable... the only negative aspect is people who dont have much of an income and bad credit because of bills they are struggling to pay cant get a home without going through a ton of trouble...

Answer 5

Buying is better in general. You have a much better chance of creating value and being more wealthy at the end than if you had rented.

Pros
-You get a slight tax break on the interest payments of the mortgage.
-There's a chance of capital appreciation of the house and the government has allowed capital gains on your primary residence of 250k/500k if you've lived there for a couple of years.
-You can more "value" back after each month compared to throwing away money to your landlord with rent.

Cons
-There's also a chance of losing money if you overpaid and the price comes down.
-It's going to be more expensive in general to buy.
-Property tax.
-You're more responsible for the maintanance of the house.

Answer 6

definitely prefer buying over renting. if you buy it, after you get the payments done it becomes yours. if you rent it, it's always someone elses and as long as you live there you'll have to keep paying for it.

Answer 7

buying is better, when renting you are wasting money. look at this, if you rent at 600/mo for 2 years, that is 14,400 that you will never see again. If you put that into a house, you still have that 14,400.

Answer 8

It all depends on your long term goal; House can be good investment; for example if I sell my house now after 2 yrs of owning it I would make a profit of $10K after all the fees and etc.
it depends where you are and the housing market

Answer 9

buy your home yes you will have upkeep but there is know more land growing any where that I know. Real state goes up most of the time. so the better value.

Answer 10

buy -- it is a big investment but most property values increase!