"victor" wrote in message
news
Ok, ok, ok. My friends and family keep nagging at me to stop renting
and buy a house. I'm so sick of them droning on about points-this and
closing costs-that. But the more I think about, the less sense it seems
to make for me. Here's why:

1. "You'll save a fortune on taxes." True. But the property taxes
will pretty much cancel out any savings you got on the income taxes.

Don't you realize that when you pay rent you're paying the property tax for
the owner anyway? In fact, you're covering all the landlord's costs plus
paying them additional for the use of the property. And as you realize,
you're getting no tax break for it whatsoever.

2. "You're throwing rent money down the toilet." True. In all
likelihood, your mortgage payment will be twice your rent. By the time
you pay it off, you'll be drinking Ensure, wearing Depends, and too old
to maintain the house. Then you'll be wanting to move back to ... AN
APARTMENT! By that time, an assisted living apartment. And let's be
realistic. You're NOT going to be like those power couples in Money
magazine who claim they're going to pay off the mortgage in 5 years and
retire in 10. Yeah, right.

DH and I paid off our mortgage when we were 40 and 45, respectively. We were
middle-income people. We later chose to move to a larger, more costly house
and take on a new mortgage, but if we hadn't, we'd have been looking at
about 30 years or more of no-rent, no-mortgage living, with money stashed
away to pay for that assisted living facility when the time came.

3. "It's one of the few things you buy that appreciate in value."
Assuming that you find someone who is willing to pay your inflated
selling price. Assuming that the neighborhood doesn't go down the
tubes. Assuming that the new house you buy will end costing as much as
you think it's going to (not!). Too many assumptions.

People have indeed been burned on sale price alone, and I can tell you that
the house DH and I owned for more than 20 years certainly didn't appreciate
in value enough to keep up with the inflation rate at the time. However, we
had the use of the property to live in over that time, and we were building
up equity. The neighborhood didn't go anywhere--it was pretty much the same
when we left. It was an established area of 40-year-old houses. Had we
decided to stay another 30 years, I suspect nothing much would have changed
either. Too soon to say for sure, though.

4. Maintenance. I'm lucky if I have time to clean my apartment, let
alone a house. I've worked customer service for plumbing, HVAC, and
home maintenance companies before, and I hear how much people pay for
this stuff. In an apartment, it's all FREE.

Free??? At this point I'm starting to agree that you shouldn't buy a house,
because you have to be either extremely stupid or trolling. THE LANDLORD
DOESN'T SUPPLY YOU WITH FREE MAINTENANCE. You pay for it in your rent. As in
#1 above, you also pay a surcharge for the maintenance services the landlord
arranges for. It's part of his/her PROFIT.

In the end, I suppose it's a matter of personal preference. But I do
wish my home-owning friends would cut out the holier-than-thou attitude.

Actually it's obvious you've made up your mind. I only spent time responding
to your post for the benefit of other people who might be reading. Your
friends are probably not being holier-than-thou, they're more likely just
being smarter-than-thou. That said, though, I absolutely agree it's a matter
of personal preference. Enjoy your apartment lifestyle, but don't try to
convince anyone it's necessarily fiscally responsible.