There are some areas where it doesn't make any financial sense to own real estate in comparison to renting for the purposes of having a place to live. If you ow

There are some areas where it doesn't make any financial sense to own real estate in comparison to renting for the purposes of having a place to live. If you owned a few years back that would be different since you might have a 3% mortgage and have bought for 50% less than today's prices. Many people compare a mortgage to rent but that's not a fair comparison. Homeowners should calculate an additional 10-20% of their mortgage to save for maintenance, repairs, etc. At some point major systems of the house will fail - HVAC, roof and windows are big ticket items. When you're renting you just call the landlord and say "the upstairs bathroom or the water heater or something is leaking water into the ceiling" - you are inconvenienced. If you own the place, you are acting as the general contractor attempting to triage the problem find a plumber or maybe an HVAC person, maybe they are flakey and don't show up, maybe they do good work, maybe their quotes are outrageous, etc. Then there is just general maintenance and upkeep on top of the redecorating that most people like to do like paining rooms different colors and having more space, typically, that gets filled with stuff. You go from 3 rooms in an apartment to 7 rooms in a house and you'll definitely spend more money on filling the 4 extra rooms, maybe with stuff, maybe with people (kids) or both.