Since the election I’ve kinda buried my head in the sand to try and stay sane, so I’m not sure what projections are looking like for the real estate market. Unfortunately I need to move pretty ASAP and I’m having the worst luck with rentals.
So, anyone have any advice or an idea of the outlook in the next few months?
Same, mortgage rates were near record high when I purchased but the circumstances were otherwise right. Mortgage ended up being a little over half the cost of renting and won’t go up every damn year, and homes aren’t getting cheaper. Plus there’s the option to refinance in the future if rates drop enough.
I’m honestly really surprised that your mortgage is about half the cost of renting. That has not been my experience in recent years at all. That’s how things used to be, but in post 2020 times, monthly mortgage payments often seem to surpass rent payments in my area, making the whole thing kind of a hard pill to swallow. Idk. Maybe I was looking at things wrong. I’m not a real estate expert. I just know that buying my place increased my monthly bills a bit instead of decreasing them like that. It seemed that would have happened with any property I looked at.
Mortgage was always higher than rent where I live, in the past, because people were renting houses they bought a long time ago so even with the profit in there it just worked out that way. Then rents exploded here, and buying was cheaper but then prices of houses exploded and now renting is cheaper again.
The caveat is that “circumstances were right” meant a sizable down payment among other things. Without the down payment, a mortgage would have approximated rent at the time. I was at the end of a lease though, and the jump to renew in a craphole apartment was enough to tip the scales. Bills are approximately the same, thankfully. I did take a hit on convenience in location, but the house was a tremendous deal.
Yeah, mortgages around here are a lot higher than rent. But rent is going up at a rate of about 10% per year, so it probably makes sense to buy, even with a more expensive mortgage. Eventually you’ll come out on top.