Comment on A conundrum
devedeset@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Bad take. In my situation it went from us paying $1900 in rent to paying $4500 in mortgage.
Well you made a choice. Either you knew you could make the payments for the price range you bought into, or you didn’t read the repayments figures on any of the documents the bank sent you and made a massive decision uninformed.
I pay 20% more for my mortgage than I did on my rent, but the house is also better, I can easily afford it, and I made that choice willingly and I’m happy with that arrangement.
The bad take I was referring to was OP claiming the mortgage payment would be lower than the rent payment. In the US this is almost never the case.
Most countries have fixed-rate mortgages. Most rental properties are also mortgaged. So a renter is paying for maintenance/insurance/tax costs, the landlord’s profits margin and the landlord’s mortgage.
If the landlord has a 10-year mortgage they just took out, the rental market wouldn’t cover that, because that landlord is competing with comparable properties that didn’t choose that amount. They are also competing with people that bought the property a decade ago and don’t have the same mortgage burden. They are also competing with some that even considers their accumulation of equity a component of their wealth and wouldn’t mind being mildly underwater early in their loan for the long term advantage.
At least in my area, the way the real estate market has worked out is that renting is about 10-15% lower than monthly expense for a 30-year purchase after 20% downpayment. If the real estate bubble pops, that will probably flip back around, but for now, the renters are getting a discount for short term, which in my opinion is the way it should be, renters getting a bit of a break for their equity disadvantage. In a sane market, the renter gets a cheaper payment that makes financial sense for 2-3 years in a property rather than being forced to rent by an owner class making new ownership impossible.
This isn’t usually the case in the UK. Rent is generally much, much higher than mortgage payments.
All rents cover mortgage, taxes, insurance, upkeep, and usually a percentage profit on top of it all. Unless your lord is renting to you at cost or below (in which case they’re losing money (not counting equity)), then there is no way the cost to rent would be higher on an equivalent property.
Like just imagine if you wanted to rent out your property for $1900/mo - you couldn’t do it.
Actually, not necessarily.
In my local market, a house that would be about $2700/month in mortgage/insurance/taxes on a 30 year term after a huge downpayment would rent for about $2400/month right now.
There are some owners that in fact do count the equity, so they are willing to buy higher and be upside down compared to what a mortgage could be. The recognize the rent is only part of the income, that the property value going up is a potential gain to cash in that’s worth a few hundred a month to ‘deposit’.
Especially if the owners can pay cash and not incur the interest associated with a mortgage. It’s a bit of an odd choice right now as just letting the cash sit in a savings account offers competitive ROI with the current interest rates, but you’ve got a lot of property bought under previous conditions.
This only holds for relatively short term though, you’d expect rent hikes to go to $3000/month within a time period where that ownership monthly payment might only go up to $2800/month due to taxes and insurance rates. So 10 years into living somewhere you are now paying more to rent it than you would be if you had purchased comparable, even ignoring the equity part of the equation. If you include equity, then you better be planning to get out in 2 or 3 years at the most if you are embarking on renting, otherwise it’s much much better to buy even with higher mortgage payment, since you can cash in on the equity if you need to, eventually.
I’d say this is a relatively sane fiscal model of renting, that you need to give the renters a discount reflecting their lack of equity. I’m kind of glad to see rental rates being below mortgage rates in my area right now. That said, it wasn’t too long ago that rental rates in my area were higher than what mortgage could be, but large companies bought up housing stock and made it supremely difficult to actually buy as a private party. With the interest rates jacked up, those companies are cooling it a bit since they don’t have access to ‘free money’ anymore.
My old house went up over 400k between 2019-2025. So, if I’d sold it in 2019, they could absolutely afford to rent to me at a lower price than if I tried buying it again.
It depends on the market. Around here is similar, the market rental rate for a house is lower than what even the most lowest realistic monthly mortgage payment would be, but only by about 10% or so. I don’t know if you also dramatically upgraded your home quality.
Not too long ago around here it was the same as the post, renting higher than mortgage.
Even then over long term, the mortgage would make sense, since you can sell and get back some of the money and your principal and interest won’t magically get bigger because of market conditions.
In a sane world renting should be a touch cheaper than mortgage over the first few years, with tenants that only plan to be there 2 or three years. The owner gets a little income while taxes and insurance get paid and their asset maintained, and the tenant gets an easier and cheaper house to move in and out of for a short term living arrangement. Problem being when the market is upside down and when tenants are stuck never being able to build equity.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
How??!
jj4211@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
While renting in some markets can be cheaper than typical mortgage for comparable homes, the amount indicated seems a bit insane.
So either he is in a crazy real estate market, or there’s some additional context that makes it a poor comparison (going from renting in Virgina to Mortgage in San Francisco, going from a 1500 qt ft townhouse to a 3000 sq ft detached house with a quarter acre of land, or going for a 10-year mortgage). Or he’s just making it up or exaggerating because it’s the internet.
Interestingly enough that $4500 is pretty much exactly what it would be with 20% down on a $500,000 house for a 10-year mortgage. Of course, I’d expect such a house to rent for about $2700 rather than $1900. I could easily imagine he was renting a 2000 square foot 3 bedroom for $1900 and moving to what seems ‘slightly better’ 3000 square foot 3 bedroom with an extra special room or something, seeing that the 10-year mortgage is much cheaper in the long haul and going for it despite the huge monthly payment in the short term.