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Comment by kfriede | Hacker News Reader

> and I now have nothing to show for the $thousands I paid him

You had a roof over your head while you paid him. That's not nothing.

> my rent certainly went to pay his mortgage on the property

Whereas the alternative is for him to not have the property at all because he can't afford it, and you're stuck finding somewhere else to live?

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It's interesting how visceral the urge is to own a home when in fact, it's not always the best choice financially.

People love to say "if I had only owned my home I wouldn't have thrown away so much in rent." This is typical in areas that have seen large increases in home prices.

You rarely hear about the opposite which is "I'm $100K underwater on my house" because people don't talk about it when things go south.

Renting and not owning removes you from the whims of the housing market. If your landlord took a 30% hit in the value of his property, as a renter you get to walk away and let him/her deal with it. That's worth something.

A 30% hit in value only matters if you need to sell it. If it's an investment property, you could probably just hold onto it until the market recovers. As long as the value of rent payments > mortgage payment + maintenance costs, it's no skin off your back if the value drops on paper.

In most cases, rent and the cost of owning is related, meaning that if you're 30% under water, the rent will likely only cover 60~80% of your monthly expenses. On top of that, if you had to move away for another job, there are additional expenses around managing rental property remotely.

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