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Articles like this should have "expiration dates." Everything in there was true at the time, but past performance is not always an indicator of future performa

• Domenic_S 12y ago
  Right. It only becomes true when prices soar very very quickly. It's been my experience that rents stabilize with buying cost over the course of a couple years. For example, in the article: > It is possible to rent a good house for $1800/month. That same house would cost about $700,000. That situation is no longer true. That situation only became true in the mid-2000s because that $700k house cost $350k the year before. The landlord is in no hurry to bump his rent to $4,500/month because it's not costing him $4,500/mo like it would if he was buying today. The rent-vs-buy calculation is dead simple: you will never, ever pay less for your rental than it costs the landlord to own it. [Edit: but it will cost less than if you bought that same house today, generally. That's why you can typically rent in a better neighborhood than you can buy in]. That means as sales prices increase, rents increase. Then add demand on top of that, as demand increases so does price. (Obviously there are other things to consider to determine if owning is right for you, but I'm talking in an theoretical world).