Property: Buying vs Renting
July 3rd, 2005 | POSTED BY ROB
I’ve been thinking about the old debate of whether buying a property is better than renting, and I thought I’d try to put together a few pros and cons and try to gather a bit of feedback.
I kind of know that this is a bit of a stupid argument, because both buying and renting have their place depending on the situation. I guess for me this is just an exercise in trying to justify why renting isn’t that bad, because although I’d like to, I’m currently in no position to buy my own place!
So here goes a few of my initial thoughts; some of them might be incorrect - please feel free to correct me and / or add any more you can think of in the comments below.
For renting:
- No worries about plumbing / electrics / general maintenance - the landlord should see to that.
- 6 / 12 month contract means that if you realise you don’t like the place after a few months you can move on fairly easily.
- No large deposit required.
- No shopping around for a decent mortgage, paying survey fees / solicitors etc.
- No worries about going into negative equity.
For buying:
- Your own property (once you’ve paid off the mortgage!).
- Generally cheaper than renting (although the gap is narrowing, apparently).
- Security - No 6 / 12 month contracts to worry about, no landlords ordering you out for making too much noise etc.
3 Comments on “Property: Buying vs Renting”
Randal Dunne, September 17th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
Rent money is dead money. Your paying for all the points made which may give you an easy life but your paying for convenience. You have nothing to call your own. As someone who has been renting for over 3 years and pissed money away on other adventures and trinkets, i say get on the ladder kid! Put yourself out there, take the risks i passed on and graft it. Its the biggest debt to hang over you in your life so get cracking on it while your commitments and dependants aren’t to great and feel the long term benefits when your rolling in the benjamins.
This is just the view of a humble printer!
Nice website, well stocked
Rob Lewis, September 29th, 2005 at 4:33 pm
Thanks for the feedback Randal (or should that be Matt?!), I see what you’re saying. But there is no real answer to the rent vs buy question, because it does completely depend on your circumstances.
Peter, December 7th, 2005 at 5:55 am
Rent is no more dead money than the part of the mortgage that goes to interest and not to the principal. The monthly rent should be carefully compared with monthly costs of homeownership. If the rent is significantly lower, renting might be the better option. The savings due to renting should be invested and not spent, to let the renter build up property, which he would otherwise (probably) do as a homeowner.
