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Personal Finance Question “Should I Buy or Rent My Home?” Answered by OneBanana Two

Written by onemonkey on January 10, 2013 · 4 Comments

If you’re deciding to buy or rent your home, consider this: both choices force you to depend on a partner. If you buy, you will have a banker as a new friend. If you rent, you will sign a deal with a landlord. Who’s your best new friend? Would it be the banker who will want you to pay him three times the cost of the value of your house? The guy who can take your life’s investment away from you if you don’t follow his rules that you agreed to? Or would it be your landlord who will pay the real estate taxes for you, replace your roof or furnace for free, paint your abode himself, and, if you don’t follow the rules, will take his own property back, charging you only one month’s rent?

And the answer is:

I thought so.

OneBanana Two

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MT

So what’s the answer? Some of us want one monkey’s opinion.
OneBanana Two

MT,

I was so caught up in “showing,” not “telling,” that I forgot to give the answer. Here’s mine: we owned our last house for ten years. The net return on our investment was two percent per year. I trace the problem to that $12,000 SEWER LINE WE HAD TO PUT IN. Excuse me, I always shout when I spend $12,000 and the result is that our sewage still goes out to the street, but I don’t have $12,000 any more.

Rent.

Ms. Two
Bai De Wei

I feel your pain, OB2. I too spent big money getting back to where I was, sewer wise. The trick is, don’t consider your house an investment. I derive great pleasure from knowing I don’t have to have my landlord’s permission to paint the outside red.

OneBanana Two

Mr. DeWei,

I did not factor in the value of freedom and pride of ownership.

I suggest the possibility of one of your nearby house owners exercising their legal option to paint their house Oregon Fighting Ducks green, thus diminishing the value of your own home. Perhaps that would cause you second thoughts of your own choice of color, like red.

A renter would remain guilt free when his house was painted.

Ms. Liang