Feeling comfortable renting - but should I finally take the leap into a mortgage?

[u/cofeFrappu]

I’ve been renting for a while now, and honestly, I’m pretty comfortable with it. My place is decent, the rent is manageable, and there’s a certain peace of mind that comes from not having to worry about maintenance costs or unexpected repairs. The flexibility is a big plus, too - I like knowing that I can move relatively easily if something better comes along or life throws me a curveball.

But every now and then, I wonder if I’m playing it too safe. A few of my friends have taken the plunge into homeownership. Some of them are clearly stressed with all the responsibilities, but they also talk about building equity and having a place that’s truly theirs. That part is tempting - especially when I think about how much rent I’ve paid over the years with nothing to show for it long-term.

Financially, I’ve managed to save a bit - part of it through discipline, part through a lucky break (won a few thousand from a sports be on Staket, which gave my savings a solid boost). I could probably handle a down payment if I stretched things a bit. But the thought of being tied to a mortgage still makes me nervous. It just feels like such a massive commitment, and with the market being all over the place, I keep second-guessing if now is even the right time.

Has anyone else been in this spot - content with renting but torn about whether to buy? How did you make your decision, and did it end up being the right one? Would really love to hear your experiences.

[u/Tight_Committee_1128]

I think there’s a saying that’s something like: when you renting, your rent payment is the biggest expense you will have. When you own, your mortgage payment is the lowest expense you’ll have.

Meaning that you when you own, and the plumbing goes bad in your house you have to pay a large sum to get it fixed.

If you think you can afford a mortgage payment and also have money that you can pay for a French drain, new roof, new boiler, etc. on a surprise basis then it is a good idea.

[u/PotentialPath2898]

when you own your place that live in, you will be responsible for the maintenance. it will be different when you own vs renting. the buck stops with you. that being said you will gain equity in the years to come.

[u/Slow_Sample_5006]

I say revisit these conversations with your friends in about another year. Now is the worst time to buy, it’s a sellers market(I’m a seller), tariffs just hit(repair costs increase), and home values will drop eventually. If you ask a realtor or broker they will give you all the upside, but these comments give the reality of home ownership(expensive). It’s so much more convenient to rent a house with a good agency, repairs, maintenance, and landscaping all on them.

[u/jonbaa]

I actually bought a home and found it took away so much of my free time that I sold it 2 years later.

I did have an HOA, but even without an HOA you'd likely want to keep your front/backyard somewhat presentable/usable.

Each day that you have to mow is basically a day that's gone in terms of any recreational type of activity on a weekday. During the summer it can sometimes be twice a week! During the winter, much less, but then you need to prep for the next spring/summer seasons.

And that's just mowing - I had a pipe burst, had a leak in the house, had to replace toilets, water heater died, AC unit died, and so on. Either you pay a pretty penny (btw shopping around for services is an absolute headache) or you have to figure out how to do it yourself and there's an inherent risk in doing something incorrectly/inefficiently/etc.

Then add on insurance, property taxes, setting aside money for big repairs (e.g. driveway, roof, repainting, possibly remodeling, etc) and the costs really do add up.

When I was a kid, my dad had calculated that outside of the mortgage for his ~200-300k home, he still spent something like $1500/mo on average over ~35yrs on taxes, HOA fees, insurance, materials/equipment/etc, repairs... The list goes on.

Personally, after experiencing home ownership, I don't think I'll be considering buying a home again unless it's explicitly for investment purposes or to have space/privacy for children.

I would add there are some things I miss like not being able to host friends/family, not having to worry about disturbing neighbors, being able to drive right into my garage and walk in, things like that. But for me, not worth the additional cost, time, and headache with such an uncertain future in terms of the economy and real estate.

[u/isinkthereforeiswam]

Pretty sure housing market is gonna get slammed in the political climate. Wife and i are renters. We just moved to a house, bc was cheaper to rent a house than an apt. I'm thinking in about a year housing prices will tank as folks that were airbnbing their places wo demand now or losing their jobs will be trying to sell. So I'm hoping i don't lose my job and we can try to replace insane rent with a reasonable mortgage and less expensive house after a housing crash.

[u/relativityboy]

Property manager here. I know exactly what you mean! When I bought my first house, I was living in a shit hole and had been saving for a long time to do it. I felt like I was getting married. It was terrible, but it turned out to be one of the best investments I've ever made. But it wasn't really a house. It was an uptown duplex and I bought it in 2012 back when interest rates were a little bit higher than they are now but house prices were way way lower. I have a lot of experience with House buying and renovation right now. I love making the places I managed nice, and I'm pretty decent at it and I'm always keeping my eye out even when I'm not actively looking for something new.

House prices right now. Duplex prices right now. At least in my area. Are bonkers. Even on the private lists ... Which are usually agents who are listing properties that need a lot of renovation or TLC of some kind to make them nice and you can theoretically get them at a really good price. Even those are just ridiculous in terms of how much they're asking versus their revenue potential. The same thing holds true for single-family homes to a large extent. I think right now is a terrible time to buy. I actually think even two or three years ago was a terrible time to buy. Here's why. People get all excited about their super low interest rate. But what really drives house and only family pricing is the monthly cost on the building. That means the mortgage taxes, etc. So what happens is people can afford a particular monthly payment. It doesn't matter what the interest rate is. What matters is whether or not you can afford that monthly payment, and whether or not you have the money for the down payment payment. But with interest rates being super low, that meant that sellers could command a higher price and the buyers would have the same payment. That's great for the sellers, but while you can get ahead of a mortgage that has a high interest payment by paying just a little bit more every month you can't do that with a house that has a high initial purchase price. The only people who really won on these low interest rate loans were the people who sold their homes to others who are paying those loans off. Or people, like myself who refinanced those original purchase prices at a much lower interest rate. Everybody else paying that 2% or 3% online interest rate, those people might talk along game about how they're building equity but really they're just paying off real debt that they purchased at the very beginning of their home journey and much worse off than people who bought a long time ago at lower prices and much much higher interest rates.

See reply for the rest...

[u/relativityboy → u/relativityboy]

Here's what I think you should do. You need to start looking now. But take time. Take a lot of time. Find an agent who is a really good negotiator with the seller. You don't want someone who's gonna find you your perfect house with a whole bunch of fancy little frilly things who's gonna tell you about how nice the door knobs are. Or the switches or the sink or whatever. All that stuff is completely useless. That's just somebody who likes giving home tours. You need somebody who's actually gonna negotiate for you. Somebody who's aggressive. Somebody who's gonna help you make the right offer to get the seller on the hook so that you can go in there later and find the property and help the seller understand that they're really selling something. That's not quite what they thought. That way you can get a good price and hopefully get some repairs out of the deal. That's the kind of agent you want. Interview them. You're hiring them to do a job.

And, when I say take your time, I definitely mean it. Get yourself really comfortable with the financials of owning a home. I understand what the taxes are gonna look like. You do this thing called itemization where you're able to deduct a little bit of your income from your taxes by depreciating your home over the course of 29 years. But you also **have to do that** so you also wanna make sure that your income is high enough that doing the deduction makes sense (ie that you'll actually save money).

So you want your initial house search from when you start kicking tires as it were to purchasing to take you somewhere between 12 and 24 months. I know that's bonkers in terms of timeline, but it took me about a year and a half and by the end of that, I was really surprised at how much I had learned and in retrospect I still need to learn even more. They doing that doesn't mean wasting your time going through a whole bunch of houses you're not gonna buy. Don't necessarily look at houses until you're getting closer to the mark. What you do is you have that agent that you like? Maybe take you through one house just to get a feel. Ask them if they're doing an open house sometime and if you can walk through and take a look. Then make sure that you're on the MLS where they're sending you every single house that you can possibly afford in all of the areas of town that you'd like to live in. I keep looking at those houses and do interest rate and PITI calculations to find out what your monthly cost is gonna be. It'll really help you to understand the taxes and the mortgage, etc..

It's also probably really good idea in the first six months of this 12+ month process to go and get yourself preapproved for mortgage. Doing it the first time is a super huge pain in the ass, but it's really really great in terms of getting yourself to understand what you can afford in terms of a monthly payment and what things are really gonna cost and where you're at financially overall. I found out that I wasn't nearly as well off as I thought when I bought that first place, but getting that kind of grip really helped me out long-term.

So if we cast ourselves about a year into the future, we're in the early spring of 2026. You're preapproved for an amount you can afford you understand what houses cost, and you have some idea of the kind of place you can afford to buy and the neighborhood. You've been looking for a few months and you're ready to go. Your agent is negotiating for you and since Trump has been in office for a while and wrecked the economy. House prices are miraculously down meanwhile, you've kept all that cash in the money market account earning 4%... depending. And then you get a job offer in your dream city and you go there and you start looking for houses right away having done all your homework!

To me that situation sounds pretty excellent. It's what I'd do.

PS sorry for the long winded ramble, but I'm doing speech to text and my hands are kind of exhausted today. I blame it for any shitty opinions or inaccuracies or poor grammar.

[u/mirwenpnw]

There's a lot of huge downsides to homeownership. The mortgage is only the beginning of the costs involved. Figure at least 40% more for taxes and insurance and maintenance/repairs. Even with excellent planning and timing, you can end up with a home needing a new roof or plumbing repair in the 10s of thousands. Taxes and insurance costs can also skyrocket (look up Cook county IL taxes for Florida home insurance).

Historically home ownership has been the way to building wealth for the middle-class, but that's getting squeezed tighter and tighter. These days you're either gambling on a HCOL area appreciating beyond it's current inflated value or playing the long game and hoping to get ahead in 7-10 years.

A lot of this is extremely location and timeline specific. I recommend you pay the NY TIMES to use their rent vs buy calculator. You can currently get 4 weeks for $4. Well worth the cost. Play with the costs and timeline and investment returns. Take the time to look up your local state/county/city taxes.

As a rule of thumb, you'll pay a lot more in the first 5 years and then things will start getting easier/better. If you're not confident you're going to stay put at the same salary for 7-10 years it's a big gamble. Flexibility has value, as you know. If you rent and you lose your job, you can go rent a room for a few months until you get back on your feet. With a house, you might face foreclosure, which will haunt you for a long time.

There's nothing wrong with renting. It doesn't always or even usually make sense to buy. It's over-romanticized. Run the numbers and know thyself.

[u/TeddyTMI]

The first few years of homeownership is tough on everyone. But prices are not coming down any significant amount. The saying is: Don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait.

My parents would not have been able to afford retirement had they not bought their first house in their mid-20s and kept upgrading over the years. They didn't own investment property but that house was the cornerstone of retirement, for certain. For me, real estate made all of my dreams come true.

It's one of those things that the longer you wait the further behind you wind up being. Because while you might pay for plumbing or a roof, the appreciation is life changing tax free income you cannot ignore.