Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Deciding whether to buy a property is one of the hardest financial decisions most of us will ever make as there are numerous factors that need to be taken into account.
An article in the Huffington Post outlines the questions you need to ask yourself before committing to this type of financial investment. One of the most important is to how mobile you’ll need to be in the near future. This is a crucial question to ask when deciding whether to rent or buy as if you have any need to be mobile in the shorter term, for example if you need to move to take advantage of better job opportunities, then it’s probably easier to rent than own.
The costs of buying and selling at home are relatively high in comparison to the costs for moving from one rental property to another. It can take several years of home ownership to recover these costs and selling a property can take time. Renting allows you to move more quickly to another type of area or another kind of housing type.
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Another important question is to decide whether you are good at saving as renting is typically less expensive than owning a property during the first few years. If you are able to rent a comparable property and can reinvest your down payment and savings made on paying a mortgage then you could be better off in terms of wealth accumulation. If you’re not good at saving than homeownership can be a better choice of forced wealth accumulation.
If you like to have plenty of amenities then owning a property could be the way to go as these options tend to be more expensive to rent than to own. This is because tenants don’t tend to take so much care of these amenities as homeowners and landlords need to charge higher rents in order to provide and maintain these housing amenities.
Once you have answered these questions it’s important to look at the housing market in your area as you need to decide whether it’s possible to create more wealth through renting or buying. While owning a home has always been a major aim for many people, fluctuating house prices make the decision more difficult than ever before. In the past it used to be a case of buying a property rather than wasting your money on rent but house pricing cycles can muddy this issue. This may be one of the most complicated questions to answer.
