{"id":209,"date":"2008-01-23T17:23:26","date_gmt":"2008-01-24T00:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2008\/01\/23\/buying-vs-renting\/"},"modified":"2010-12-08T10:11:31","modified_gmt":"2010-12-08T17:11:31","slug":"buying-vs-renting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2008\/01\/23\/buying-vs-renting\/","title":{"rendered":"Buying vs Renting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A while ago, I posted <a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2007\/08\/30\/real-estate\/\">a calculation that I had done<\/a> on renting a home vs buying one.  Those calculations have been intriguing me ever since.  I have had several conversations with people about the pros and cons, and and what-if scenarios.<\/p>\n<p>I finally decided that I needed to automate these calculations so I could easily handle the what-ifs.  Thus came to be my very own <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.sfu.ca\/~ggbaker\/personal\/rent-buy\">Renting vs Buying Calculator<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Follow that link, have a look, and play with some numbers.  The buttons beside text boxes generally calculate\/estimate the corresponding value from relevant numbers above.  You only really have to fill in the numbers without buttons beside them.  The defaults are my current best-guess at the economics of buying\/renting a nice condo in suburban Vancouver.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s shocking how hard it is to make buying financially better, as long as you assume two important things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>House values aren&#8217;t going to continue to rise at the outrageous rates they have for the last five years in North America.  This is already slowing, and betting your only\/largest investment on that assumption is foolish.<\/li>\n<li>You have the discipline to invest in something else (mutual funds or what have you) without the pressure of a looming mortgage payment.  Automatic monthly withdrawals make this easy, but it has to actually <em>happen<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The only scenario that I can find where buying has a marginal benefit is buying a small detached home (one of the 1970s-era Vancouver specials), and renting a basement suite.  Of course, that comes with the extra responsibilities and headaches of being a landlord.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, it can be hard to find rental places that are as nice as what you might imagine buying.  The rental market seems to generally target &#8220;livable&#8221;, not &#8220;nice&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Any comments on the calculator are appreciated.  It has everything I can think of that should be in there, but some of you might know better than me.<\/p>\n<p>Update 12\/2010: vancouvercondo.info has created a <a href=\"http:\/\/vancouvercondo.info\/rentvsbuy\">similar calculator<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while ago, I posted a calculation that I had done on renting a home vs buying one. Those calculations have been intriguing me ever since. I have had several conversations with people about the pros and cons, and and what-if scenarios. I finally decided that I needed to automate these calculations so I could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-links","category-moving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1179,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/1179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}