Once you have bought, you step off of that one way escalator of rising rents. Rents increase at a yearly rate about comparable to inflation in most cases, and rents never drop. I have never heard of a rent decrease except in areas that were so far gone they might as well have been war zones. You only borrowed $X when you bought, and unless you take cash out (which is under your control) you should never owe more money next year than the previous one.
So buying stops your situation from getting worse. What about making your situation better? First off, I need to observe that with rising rents, your situation will always get worse until you sell. But buying really does make your situation better. Not immediately; there’s always a hit for buying, and it always costs money to sell. But within a couple of years the average person will be above any reasonable return they can earn any other way, and the reason is leverage.
Fact one: you always need a place to live, and the options are to rent or to buy. Renting typically requires less cash flow, but returns nothing. Once you have bought, all that lovely appreciation belongs to you and nobody else but. Let’s look at an actual scenario for San Diego, one of the highest priced places to buy.
The article runs through a side-by-side, dollar-for-dollar comparison of the costs and benefits of homeownership — even in a high-priced area like San Diego in a slow market.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
to realize that we might-could-should be reading 
instead. Macintosh development is more than a few steps back from The Singularity — but it’s on the path. Now think of this: If you were offered the chance to transition from mere mortal flesh to something much more enduring — is this a task you would entrust to Microsoft…?
