Comment by pitt1980 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pitt1980 | Hacker News Reader

The option to even rent seems mostly like a large coastal metro phenomenon to me

Outside, LA, SF, DC, NYC, maybe Chicago or Philly where are all these stand alone houses for rent?

serious question

outside of major markets I don't percieve the rental stock of nice, stand alone homes with yards, being paticularly large or liquid

isn't the rent vs own always a bet on the relative size of the rental stock vs available for sale stock?

if I wanted to rent a $250,000 4 bedroom home in somewhere like Westerville, OH, how many options am I really looking at?

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http://www.homes.com/rentals/westerville-oh/?beds=4

looks like there are 4 houses that meet the critera having 4 bedrooms (and Westerville is actually much larger than most suburbs)

951 Brockwell Drive, Westerville OH, 43081 will cost you 2,000 to rent

zillow say the house is worth 231K

if I'm putting down 30K, and taking a 200K mortgage at 4% interest, http://www.mortgagecalculator.org/ says I'll pay $1,194.41 a month

where are all my savings from renting again?

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I'll buy the argument that it makes sense in major cities, especially in markets where flippers drive up the costs

and also for people who would be buying attached properties

I'm not really that impressed with the argument for suburban stand alone properties in flyover country

I live in flyover country, and rented single family homes here with no problem until we finally bought a year ago. It's true that there's a smaller stock of rentals, but there are more than your example suggests. I'd bet that there are lots of rentals in Westerville, OH that aren't coming up in your search, because they are rented through other mechanisms (anything from Craigslist to a sign in front of the house to locally-specific websites). It's true that fewer people are looking to rent, because buying is more accessible to the median family here than on the coasts, but renting is absolutely a thing that people do.

Also, mortgage is REALLY not the only cost of home ownership. I own a house worth about $200,000. My mortgage payment is about 850/month, my taxes are about 550/month, insurance is 60, and I budget 300/month for maintenance. It would cost me 1600 to rent an equivalent house, so I'm paying more on a monthly basis to own than I would to rent. Some of that is equity, true, which is why we bought. On the other hand, when/if we sell, we'll be paying a realtor $12,000 for the privilege, so we'll have to live here awhile before the equity gains outweigh the transaction costs.

You don't mention the principal part of the mortgage payment and the tax benefit of mortgage interest and property tax.

You might not be paying much more than rent.

even if I'm missing half the rental market, that seems pretty illiquid to me, and again, Westerville is considerably larger than most American suburbs, if I want to keep my kids in the same school district, I don't want to be limited to picking between 8 landlords

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how old is your house?

how much of your maintenance budget have you actually used?

> where are all my savings from renting again?

I'm not sure who you're railing against. Plugging in your numbers to the linked post says you should only rent the Brockwell Dr. house if you can get it for less than $850/mo.

if the tone came off as railing, I should have dialed it back a bit

its strikes me that a big issue with renting is the liquidity of the market you're renting in

especially if you have kids, and changing school districts becomes a big deal

all in all, I'd rather not make a 30 year bet on the US residential real estate market with a whole mortgage worth of my net worth

but its seems currently I have to pay a pretty steep premium to make the opposite bet

There are definitely differences in the property stock that's available for rental vs. buying--though the specifics doubtless vary depending upon what you're looking for and where you're looking. In general, it's probably fair to say that renting standalone houses with the expectation that you won't have to move--with the costs and hassle that implies--can be difficult.

Buying a house is certainly something of a financial bet and clearly makes you less mobile. On the other hand (barring foreclosure), nobody can force you to move and you have a lot more flexibility in what you do with the property. For most people, as time goes on, the ability to pick up and move to another city without too much thought becomes less important and having more stability in their residence more so.

In your example, renting is the only option if you don't have that $30K to put down.

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