Our mortgage is under $1000 a month. For a three bedroom house. Granted, we don’t live in the most desirable city, but it’s in a really nice, low-crime neighborhood which is close to a bunch of stores and the mall.
I don’t even want to know what rentals cost around here.
Ya, for those of us lucky enough to have been in a position to buy when the market was down, it’s great. People looking to buy a house today are fucked. We bought our home at the end of 2011. We paid $150k for a ~1250sq.ft. home, on about half an acre of land and the local school district is well rated. It’s a more rural area, with the local economy linked to several area US DoD installations. We refinanced the loan and pulled some money out to re-do the roof and windows and now sit at 3.5% APR. The end result is a monthly mortgage payment of ~$950/month.
Our house now appraises for ~$340k. While some of that movement is likely related to finishing the basement and adding 500sq.ft. of living space and an extra bathroom, most of it has just been market movement. Given today’s interest rates, payments would be north of $2000/month. While we could probably make that work, it would make saving any money difficult.
Given current conditions, I think the article is right. Rent for now and hope the housing market corrects.
That sounds like a dream. I just bought a $550k house with $130k down and pay $3500 a month. Rates are absolutely ridiculous. At the same time, I don’t think it’s cheaper to rent at the moment.
This will never solve
I see! So rent has to increase to close the gap, right? RIGHT?!
There’s other factors too, such as children, schooling, internet connectivity, social circle, relatives, weather, etc.
Where are these mythical rantals that cost 1600/ mo?
You can still get ~1000/mo in a decent apartment in an urban area in Ohio.
If the urban area you are talking about is specifically the east side of Cleveland, or near parsons in Columbus then maybe. But as it stands right now in the cleveland area specifically (can’t speak about another place) you’ll struggle to find anything that’s upkept for less than 1300 right now.
At least that’s my experience
Depends on the area but 1600 a month is about 19200 per year, which assuming a 5% increase year over year (not exactly realistic but worse case scenario) equates to around 678,800 after 20 years. Depending on the quality of home you’re renting, that could be anywhere from half a million to over 2 million for a 20 year mortgage.
Going to vary wildly by where you are living but overall, seems renting is the cheaper solution, and the caveat of whether or not that home will be worth what you paid for it in 20 years if you decided to sell it. And of course, not considering property taxes.
