by Natalia Jones

Created on: March 19, 2010

Buying a house is a universal dream. There is a sense of security associated with owning a home that is hard to duplicate, but is renting the worst thing you could do. More and more there seems to be a debate on whether or not renters had it right all along. Take a look at the advantages of renting listed below to see if renting is the better choice for you at the moment.

Renting is Better If You Move Around A lot

If you move around constantly for your job, renting may be the obvious solution. Buying a home is terrific if all the right things are in place, but it is an expensive and inflexible investment to make if you are unable to commit to a single location for more than two to three years at a time. Every time you sell a home there are closing costs to deal with and you also need to factor in the time it takes the home to sell, which can be longer than is convenient for your next move.

Maintaining a House is Expensive… Not that Renters Would Know

Maintaining a house is an expense. On top of the utility bills and association fees or landscaping costs, there are also many things that could go wrong with a house. These things all add up to a tidy sum, not to mention the cost of sprucing the place up, which is exponentially higher for home owners on account of their pride of ownership.

In a Climate of Falling House Prices Renting May Be the Smartest Move

When house prices are falling across the board, it may be smarter to rent that it would be to park cash in a depreciating asset. To qualify for the average mortgage, most financial institutions require at least a 10% down payment, but they could request up to 20% to secure the loan. If house prices continue to fall after you purchase, your decision to purchase can easily be equated to losing 100% of your investment if home prices slip by an equivalent 10%.

Is There a Choice Between Renting and Starting a Business?

If you are at the stage in life where you are being pressured into buying a home, but you also want to start your own business, choosing between the two can be a confusing battle. If you are not planning to rent any part of your new home though, your home will not be generating any return on your money, whereas your business presumably would. Using this factor on its own it may be better to continue renting while you start your business and postpone buying a home until your business is off the ground.

Renters have been looked down upon for quite some time, but there are certainly times when it’s smarter to rent and not own. If you are at the crossroads, the best advice you could get, is to ignore the noise that society makes and figure out what’s best for your personal situation taking the pros and cons into account. 

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