> Rent is pissing away money, and from the rates I've seen, the monthly rent on a house is often very close to the monthly mortgage payment, so the "investing t

> Rent is pissing away money, and from the rates I've seen, the monthly rent on a house is often very close to the monthly mortgage payment, so the "investing the difference ins S&P500" ends up being moot. this varies a lot locale to locale. in some places the rent is very close to the monthly mortgage payment. in some places, the mortgage is much higher. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-rent-ratio.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-rent-ratio.asp if you're damn sure you want to live somewhere long enough to pay off a 15 year mortgage, then yeah, odds are it's better than renting. most people can't be 100% sure of that, so to make it a fair calculation you also have to include the costs of buying and selling. in theory, you should also have to price in the risk of having so much money concentrated in a single asset, but it seems to be a matter of policy that housing prices are never allowed to go down.