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I’m with you on renting instead of buying. I owned a home until a divorce. It wasn’t for me. I had to develop a whole network of unreliable contractors, which was time-consuming and the repairs and repairs to fix bad repairs all added up. Then our property taxes doubled in a year, raising a mortgage quite a bit and would continue to rise. I didn’t want to stay there for 30 years and while it did go up in value, there really wasn’t much of a guarantee that owning it would lead to actually owning a house out right in the future. Seemed to me like I was renting from the bank instead of owning but responsible for all the costs of ownership. For me now the flexibility of renting is priceless. I can move around and not feel tied down by someone else’s dream.

I bought a house in a walkable neighborhood. (It's in a rust belt city, so it's plenty affordable.) A mortgage puts your rent payment into something you own, instead of into someone else's pocket. When you pay it off, you're not spending $thousands per month just for a place to live. (That's where I'm at now.)

Yes, I'm quite familiar with the rhetoric.

I've prioritized finding the smallest and most affordable apartment I can in an area that I want to live in (very nice walkable/bikeable non-rust-belt city).

For the past ~12 years my rent has been less than 33% of the mortgage payments for the smallest home in my area (not including property taxes and other costs of homeownership).

Investment gains on what I've saved are good enough for me to feel like I can keep renting relatively comfortably until I die. What else do I need?

I will concede that if you're comparing renting and buying equivalent properties that buying generally makes financial sense. But that's not what I'm doing.

> I will concede that if you're comparing renting and buying equivalent properties that buying generally makes financial sense. But that's not what I'm doing.

If you concede that buying makes sense when comparing like for like, why not do that?

Buy a tiny studio apartment of the size you prefer and then you can own it.

If you're comparing rent on a tiny apartment to mortgage on a larger single family home, of course the tiny apartment is cheaper. It doesn't conclude that renting is cheaper, only concludes that a tiny apartment is cheaper than a house.

> When you pay it off, you're not spending $thousands per month just for a place to live.

Not everyone wants to live somewhere long enough to pay off a place though. It’s no different than other financial choices. The best decision for the individual isn’t always the most rational.

> I just don't see any of the upsides that so many people seem to.

The way I see it I'm going to be paying a mortgage either way. I'd rather it be my own than my landlord's.

Why exactly?

I'm fine with paying for someone else to own the roof over my head. I've just prioritized keeping that cost as low as possible so I can do other things with my money.

I can see two main reasons. When the mortgage is paid off:

1) you own a valuable asset. 2) your cost of living falls dramatically.

> 1) you own a valuable asset

I guess this one is a matter of perspective. I don't see a house as an asset in my life.

> 2) your cost of living falls dramatically

My cost of living was dramatically lower the whole time leading up to the point where the drop-off occurs for the homeowner. They only start catching up after decades.

Well, I see my house as my home. But I do know that if things ever got rough I could sell it and live somewhere cheaper with a good chunk of money left over. So it is an asset, even if you don't think of it like that on a daily basis.

Whether renting is cheaper than buying varies. In the short term it often is, but not always. There is generally a long term point where buying is cheaper - but again, not always! If you can do something else with the money you save renting, then good for you.

To put this on context, to rent a house in my street is only a tiny bit cheaper than a mortgage on it. So it would not make long term sense to rent unless you had no choice.

> I don't see a house as an asset in my life.

But you do! You said you are paying rent, thus you attach value to having a place to live.

> My cost of living was dramatically lower the whole time leading up to the point where the drop-off occurs for the homeowner.

In the other response you acknowledged this is from comparing rent on a tiny apartment to mortgage on a house, which cannot be compared.

If you don't need a house you could buy a tiny apartment. That gives you the benefit of a low mortgage now and zero mortgage when you're older.

> But you do! You said you are paying rent, thus you attach value to having a place to live.

I mean obviously it’s an asset in that it adds value to my life b/c without it I’d be homeless. Thx for pointing that out.

> > The way I see it I'm going to be paying a mortgage either way. I'd rather it be my own than my landlord's.

> Why exactly?

Because if it is your mortgage, it has an end date. After that your housing costs drop dramatically. If you time it so that your housing costs drop dramatically near the time your income drops dramatically in retirement, it's a good combination.

I wonder how much it is affected by psychological factors? Like in how much you enjoy seeing/hearing/smelling strangers/other people? Some people aren't bothered by close proximity to masses of humanity, and other are? I can also imagine that the number of children you have could play a factor in how small of an apartment you want to live in.

A huge part of it is psychological for sure.

I grew up with a sibling and 2 parents in a house with 800ish square feet of living space in a very rural area. To some people that’ll sound like a lot of room and to some it’ll seem really tiny. To me it was just all I knew.

> Rent a small apartment and walk wherever you want.

That's a non sequitur.

You could rent a farmhouse out in the boonies where you can't walk anywhere or you could buy an apartment in the same area you live in and walk as much as the renter does.

OK then buy a small apartment and walk wherever you want. Great point lol.

The point is that people don’t do the things they say they want to do.