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> Turned out to be pretty close to my rent, in most cases. Let's take this house: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Oakland/2822-Myrtle-St-94608/home/762268 https://ww

> Turned out to be pretty close to my rent, in most cases. Let's take this house: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Oakland/2822-Myrtle-St-94608/home/762268 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Oakland/2822-Myrtle-St-94608/home/... Property taxes according to Redfin are $2,471 a year, for a total cost of $74,130. A thirty-year mortgage at 4.5% interest will see you paying $350,229 in interest over 30 years. Together, that's $1,178 not going into equity. Here's a Craigslist search for homes with 4 bedrooms or more in the same neighborhood: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/eby/apa?nh=64&bedrooms=4 http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/eby/apa?nh=64&bedrooms=4 Note that there aren't any comparable places to rent, but even the ones that are close are more than double our "amount over equity per month" figure. This also assumes your rent over 30 years is going to stay fixed the same way your mortgage payment is. It won't: https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-oakland-rent-trends/ https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-oakland-rent-tren... I couldn't find good data on housing appreciation for the Bay Area, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it doesn't mirror the U.S. overall. And either way, appreciation only matters if you're thinking of your home as an investment. Assuming you're thinking of it as a place to live, it makes sense both in pure cost terms and for some things that are harder to put a price on. For instance -- how much is having a permanent address worth to you? Or the price of never having to move again, never having to sit in another group housing interview again, never being able to be evicted by "owner move in" or whatever shibboleth is currently popular in Bay Area eviction bootcamps? (this is a real thing: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Lawyer-pumps-up-S-F-landlords-at-boot-camp-5008552.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Lawyer-pumps-up-S-F-la...)

sdenton4 11y ago
You're comparing a two bed room house (at the low end of what's available for price, I'll add) to four bedroom rentals. I'm currently in a shared four bedroom house with five people; together, my wife and I pay $1500/mo for rent. Sharing one of the cheaper 4br houses equally amongst four housemates gives $800/mo. So, meh. We are planning to get things together to buy a house; the quick survey just convinced us that it didn't make sense to rush in. We also feel that there's a decent possibility that the housing prices actually are bubbly, which makes us less inclined to rush out and buy something. Overall, the exercise convinced us to wait a bit and get together enough to shoot for a 20yr mortgage.
- beatpanda 11y ago
  Read the ad again, its a 4 bedroom house split into two units. And you just went from "it costs you just as much to rent as it does to buy" to "cutting my monthly payment in half isn't a strong enough motivator." I stand by what I said -- renting is irrational. The kid in the box truck is smarter than every Bay Area software engineer blowing their money on rent.
aidenn0 11y ago
The property tax is almost certainly off by a factor of 2. You will be paying 1% of the purchase price of your home to start out, as that's definitively the market value at time of purchase in an arms-length transaction.

sdenton4 11y ago

You're comparing a two bed room house (at the low end of what's available for price, I'll add) to four bedroom rentals. I'm currently in a shared four bedroom house with five people; together, my wife and I pay $1500/mo for rent. Sharing one of the cheaper 4br houses equally amongst four housemates gives $800/mo. So, meh. We are planning to get things together to buy a house; the quick survey just convinced us that it didn't make sense to rush in. We also feel that there's a decent possibility that the housing prices actually are bubbly, which makes us less inclined to rush out and buy something. Overall, the exercise convinced us to wait a bit and get together enough to shoot for a 20yr mortgage.

beatpanda 11y ago
Read the ad again, its a 4 bedroom house split into two units. And you just went from "it costs you just as much to rent as it does to buy" to "cutting my monthly payment in half isn't a strong enough motivator." I stand by what I said -- renting is irrational. The kid in the box truck is smarter than every Bay Area software engineer blowing their money on rent.

aidenn0 11y ago

The property tax is almost certainly off by a factor of 2. You will be paying 1% of the purchase price of your home to start out, as that's definitively the market value at time of purchase in an arms-length transaction.