Renting or Buying: Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages and Disadvantages of Home Ownership

When I first looked into buying my first home back in 2007 I had to really weigh the pros and cons of purchasing a house in Washington State. The homes that range from $200,000 to $300,000 were considered on the cheap end and anything from $350,000 to $450,000 were considered the moderate homes. The more expensive ones ranged from $500,000 to several millions of dollars; however that was more for the rich people like Bill Gates.

When my fiancé and I were pre-approved for a home loan we were approved for $295,000 with a five percent interest rate. Which we thought was great considering I didn’t have much credit and I just started my job the year before. So we found a realtor to take us around to look at homes in that price range and all I can say we were highly disappointed. The homes were further south than we wanted to live and the homes that were within the preferred area were either very old or not in the best of neighborhoods so we had to take that into consideration as well.

Then when we set down with the loan officer to go over the cost and after all the taxes, interest and insurance were applied, the cost would be $2,600 a month. My fiancé and I really had to consider the sacrifices we would have to make to own a home, plus the fact that if one of us were to ever lost our jobs we could never be able to keep up with the payments. Nevertheless, there are several advantages in home ownership, such as the tax rights offs, home improving loans against the home’s equity and the ability to remodel or add on to the house to improve the value.

Still, the disadvantages such as the high mortgage payment, property values dropping, the costs of home repairs and maintenance and the inability to move to a different location can make the idea of owning a home daunting. Therefore after some soul searching we decided it was best for us to rent a house instead of buying. This was the best decision we ever made together because two years later due to the crash in the economy I was laid