buying vs. renting...

[wuwt]

Whenever I get angsty about still living in an apartment, I have to remind myself given CA house prices where I want to live (700K+, 6% down), buying isn't better than renting even after _30_ years.

It only starts to make sense to buy once house prices get down to 400K....

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Comments

[barbarienne]

Yeah, your situation is entirely different. The prices in your neck of the wood are staggering. I say to you the same thing my sister and I mutter regarding home prices in my mom's neighborhood (which are similar to yours): "Who the heck is buying these things?"

I mean, I can understand why some neighborhoods are more expensive than others. My mother's is in NYC proper, so she has extremely low taxes compared to the surrounding counties, and excellent public services. Add that she has a detached house on a good chunk of property, that it's in the best school district in the city (the local elementary is one of the tops in the whole state), and it's convenient to four major highways, and I can see why her neighborhood would be so valuable.

The thing is, it was valuable for all those reasons when she and Dad bought it 40+ years ago. Since the time it was built 70 years ago, it was intended for professionals with young families, who would grow old there. When we moved in, there were older couples or widows--the original owners--in about half the houses. Now my mom and my childhood friends' parents are the older couples and widows, and new young professionals have moved in with their 2.2 children.

But when my folks bought the house, it cost less than a year of my dad's salary. The current salary for the same job would be a third of the house's value. Affordable, technically, but not like it was when my folks moved in.