Buying A Home
CowgirlK39
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Leasing vs buying
DH and I have been house hunting like crazy. I'm very picky, with a list of must-haves. DH agrees with these but to him, everything is a great house because he grew up in a trailer. We just saw a home that matched most of the must-haves except that it is a rental. I can't seem to wrap my head around renting a home. The rent would be almost double what we pay now, but we realize that would be about what we would pay for a mortgage too. I just figured it would make more sense to save the money buy staying here till we find a place to buy. What are the benefits of renting a home? What's better about owning?
Re: Leasing vs buying
The benefits of owning: Instead of spending money that you will never see again simply for a roof over your head, you will be doing that and building equity at the same time. Plus your mortgage rate will remain relatively steady- landlords can increase the rent over time. And if you don't plan on moving for several years, if at all, it just plain feels great to plant your roots and feel like a real part of the community and not just a rolling stone.
If I was in your position I would just stay where I was and save the extra money for a down payment. If the rent on the home is pretty much equal to a mortgage it wouldn't make sense to me to live there. But that is me. There is no one size fits all answer!
Hope this helped! Good luck!
Make sure your list of "Must Haves" is reasonable for your budget.
Do NOT buy if you plan to move before 7-10 years,
I advise investigating the actual cost of ownership in your particular area, though. Many people assume that you will always pay more for a mortgage than you will in rent, but in at least one place we've lived, the opposite was true. The town had an extremely low rental vacancy rate so landlords were price-setters there while actual real estate values, especially in certain areas, were quite low. We literally bought a house at the time because renting would have been about three times the monthly price
Good luck!