The rent vs buy discrepancy in San Diego is psychotic. Rent on a 1br is around $2500/mo to $3000/mo, depending on area, etc. The going rate for a comparable 1br condo anywhere is about $500k with a $400/mo HOA. Do the math and it works out to about $4000/mo at today's interest rates.

That premium to buy is insane. In a normal market, there shouldn't even be that premium. Renting should be more expensive. But in a normal market, 30 year bonds should yield more than 1 year bonds too, so things are all sorts of phukky right now.

Another reason I bought :

We don't have the volume here on the east coast...the vacancy rate is near 0%

Wanna rent here on the east coast? Well have fun fighting over run down dwellings in rough neighborhoods for 1900 + because the supply is that bad here rn

The $140k down payment and principal portion of your mortgage payments aren’t lost money, they’re built equity. You still theoretically have that money, it has just changed states from liquid to solid.

I would probably be looking more at the $2100/month rent versus your mortgage interest and any other costs, what you’re losing in rent versus what you’d be losing buying.

Oh I see. I wouldn't normally say renting is better but if your rent is that low and you can't find a comparable house to buy in a good area and keep a similar monthly payment then I'd stay renting for the time being and keep stacking cash. Hopefully interest rates will come down at some point.

I was fortunate when I was renting the condo that my rent stayed the same for 6 years. The 7th year he raised it by $100. He tried $150 but I pushed back reminding him how I paid my rent on time and took good care of the place and even improved a couple things like removing the disgusting grout in the master bathroom shower and re-doing it. Cost a couple bucks but I spent a day or two cleaning the old grout out. Something he would have never done or paid to do. I moved out a few months before the 8th year started thankfully. I know he was going to try to gouge me by that point because of every other landlord price gouging. I think he's charging $1600 for the new tenant and I'm positive he didn't upgrade anything in that crappy ancient kitchen or the bathrooms. Plus half the windows didn't work right. The best part is I got my full depost back, he didn't even try to fight that because he knows the place looked better and cleaner when I left than when I moved in.

Rent isn’t static though. If renting is so much cheaper than buying right now, probably because you have people who are sitting on mortgages locked in at lower rates than current, it’s likely just a matter of time before more rental mortgages come in secured at higher rates and those higher borrowing costs will be passed through as higher rent.

The only way this doesn’t happen is if you think rates will be coming down sharply in the near future, which will only happen if the economic chit hits the fan and there are no signs of that right now. If rates do otherwise come down, it seems reasonable to expect home prices will increase with the lower borrowing costs and again you’d be better off buying.

Buy if you own enough inflated assets like stocks and bitcoin and can transfer it into housing.

There isn't some massive market of people buying rental properties right now, so this isn't the case. Rentals are only transacting in cases where there is value add or development potential. And in a declining envorinment, rent can also easily drop from current high levels(as well as people being able to move to a cheaper rental), which gives renters a lot more flexibility over homeowners(who have a lot tougher and more costly time making moves).

I think you're a bit naive about what's currently taking place in the housing markets. And it's happening at a time when the economy is generally still pretty decent, so the decline will take place over years instead of months as the last few recessions have.

You’re heavily biased towards wanting a market decline complete with prolifically posting fear porn threads, so I don’t think you’re neutral in this and would caution anyone from using insight that has a clear bias — at least without weighing it against insight with an equal and opposite bias.

Pretty silly to be playing these games with a primary residence IMO, buy a friggin home guys. When you have a primary residence, then you can weigh the pros and cons of doing this or that or whatever and you’ll still have the equity you’ve built in the place because, unlike a rental, the money doesn’t just disappear.

You're heavily biased towards wanting a market where your residence can't just melt as the temperature increases.

What does the bank do when the igloo melts? Or do they issue mortgages for only the land it sits on?

To be honest, I just want stability and markets to normalize. However, we achieve that goal fastest is what I am in favor of.

But right now we're in the middle of prime Spring buying and selling season, and I'm seeing great properties with no flaws having price drops of 10% after only 15 days of being on market, so this tells me that we're in a much different situation than we were during the last few years.

Equity can and will "just disappear", especially if you bought at an inflated price. Sure, you might be able to hold onto the property and recoup your money in 10 years, but that's a lot of rent payments into your own house before you get there. Plenty of people who bought in 2006-2008 didn't see those values again until 2014.

I'd agree but you're going to be able to contribute only so much to your Roth before hitting the limit.

For me 2200 vs 1100 to rent (including utilities). Sheit guess I'll be renting for a few more years.

Are you going to be in that area long term? Have you done the math and looked at trends in your area to determine how long it will take for rent on a comparable property to reach 4K/month? In 31 years what will that paid off property feel like? How big of an asset will it be? How much will it have appreciated over time? Look at the area history. Look/think about its future before making a decision. Is the city growing? Is it stagnant? Will it die?

I'd say now is a very bad time to be looking at buying. I feel bad for anyone who didn't snatch up real estate with juicy low rates. Or who doesn't have the cash to be looking for a cash deal in our current market. With that said its a very long term game.

I'd be stacking cash and waiting/looking for opportunity. Don't rush this market.

The idea that you can just invest the money and it will be 'earning' in some other place isn't so clear. Yes, if he invests it all into a simple ETF it can be hands off. But that money will not benefit him at all for what, 30+ years? He still has to shell out money every single month on a place to live. Rent will continue to climb. Real estate prices may drop in the short term but over the course of 30 years homes to buy and places to rent will surely be much higher then they are now.


I took the opposite approach. I put down 20% on my mortgage. I didn't have to worry about shelling out money on PMI. And my monthly mortgage was a lot lower and I was able to save/invest more every month. Furthermore, when interest rates dropped dramatically. I refinanced my home. Had a ton of equity in it. And now my monthly note is ridiculously low at an extremely low rate.


My strategy was simple. Keep monthly recurring payments as low as possible. Invest in both real estate and the stock market over the long term. Continue to scale my income so that my monthly recurring payments grow smaller and smaller by percentages. I'm 37 now. My home costs per year is now just 8% of my income.


Yes its nice to have a big investment in the market, especially when its green. And yes, its nice to have a massive sum of cash, sitting in the bank. But its also very nice to have a nice piece of equity in your home and a low monthly payment on said home. It takes time to get there. But you aren't going to do it as a renter or by putting as little as possible into your home and inflating monthly payments larger then necessary.




I'm on track to be fully retired at 46 (just 9 more years). There are lots of financial theory out there, but I think I did it 'right'.

Fluctuations in price don’t change how many bedrooms and bathrooms a house has, a primary residence is for primarily residing in and equity building etc is like a forced savings plan on the side.

Stock markets are also at quite high valuations right now in general, some would call it bubbly in certain areas, so people thinking they can invest and come out so much further ahead may not be correct.

Because money tends to just flow between these different things, the people who think they can make more money in the stock market then buy property will be competing with everyone else who has the same idea. So now you need to buy stocks at the right time, sell the stocks at the right time, and then buy property before everyone else beats you to it.

People should just buy a home whenever they’re financially capable, and things will sort themselves out over the long run.

Stock markets aren't the only place to put that money. Rather than having it tied up in your primary residence, it would be better as the down payment on a rental property. Rememer, anybody who views their primary residence as some type of investment in 2024 is not financially savvy.

This .

Oliver opinion is extremely biased , one sided and close minded


He doesn't take into a full account of WHY people purchase homes

Being someone who works in Real Estate, i know these reasons better than 99.9% of people. People should view their home as a place to live. When they begin deluding themselves that they're buying some type of investment is when things get thorny. You can occasionally make money buying and selling your primary residence, but it should only be viewed as a place to live.

Like the poster more less said above ...play these games all you want with secondary dwellings or rental properties-

But you'd have to be a fking fool to prefer renting your primary residence vs owning it over a long term time scale


Just the stability and control of owning makes it worth it

Not really. Its not as easy as just putting a down-payment on a place and keep tenants in it all the time. A lot of people lose their ass and end up dumping the property after a lot of stress and blowing through a ton of cash. Don't get me wrong. I'm all about having rental properties if its fits. However, I do not think everyone should have them. A LOT of people take L's trying to get into that market.



If he were interested in building a rental property portfolio I think the smartest way to do it is buy a decent 2-4 plex. Live in one and rent the others. Or he can try to find a reasonable priced property. Buy it and live in it. And every 5-10 years buy a new place. Move out and live in that. And rent the old one. But you need to be able to afford multiple mortgages to be safe. And you need to be able to stack a large amount of cash. Enough to comfortably put down 20% on a new place every 5-10 years. Most people cannot afford to buy a single property. Much less afford to pay rent. And buy a property. And accumulate multiple properties all while paying rent.






A primary residence is not an investment. But it can turn into one in the future. I've been in my house 9 years now. When my girl and I build a new place I'm going to rent it out. However, my mortgage is currently right at 1/4th of what I can rent it out for.


After putting some equity in it and making moves. I can rent it right now and be in the green $1500ish per month after expenses on the house. Area I'm in is growing significantly and rent appreciates every year consistently. Only a matter of time before this house is being rented for 5-6X+ what I spend per month on it. So in the end, what started out as a primary residence will have turned into an amazing investment.

I consider this method to have been easy and low risk. Furthermore even after we build our new place. If I can't find a 'decent' tenant for this place I have no problems floating the mortgage on two places. I got lucky with the markets. But I'd have never gotten lucky if I'd have stayed a renter all this time. I'd have a big stock portfolio. Would have **** out about 130K in rent that I wouldn't get back. And I'd be looking to dropping a big down payment on houses that are a lot more expensive now then they used to be, with a much higher interest rate.

Sounds like a good time to wait before buying for you, OP. Interest rates will either go down next year or they'll go down if we hit a noticeable recession before then. And you'll have to look at how much prices have gone up locally to try and figure out if they'll keep rising or if they're destined to fall like they already have in places that bubbled too much (i.e. Phoenix, Austin, others). There are other factors unique to each area, but WHEN prices boomed will be a heavy factor too.

For example here prices are down year over year even though we're a rapidly growing area. Prices jumped up early in the pandemic here (Raleigh, NC) so the inevitable price flattening to decreasing was inevitable to hit earlier than in the Midwest or Northeast US where prices jumped up a lot very late in the housing boom. Even within NC the boom hit lower cost cities much later than it did here. Places like Winston-Salem, Greensboro had price jumps much later so their prices aren't going down like they are in the early boom cities like Raleigh and Charlotte. In early 2022 you could buy 2 houses in Greensboro for the price of one house in Raleigh even though they're only an hour apart. Raleigh's down a bit, Greensboro's prices are way up in the same time period. Raleigh was an early boom so now it's down (-2% YoY), Greensboro a late boom is +18% YoY. So where in the boom and relative bust cycle things are locally is a big factor to consider.

Some cities are relatively immune which makes things complicated in them.