Hasta La Ideas

I grew up in a part of the country where land is comparatively inexpensive and housing prices are tame. In my hometown of Topeka, Kansas, you can buy a decent single-family home on a nice lot in a low-crime neighborhood for around $100,000. This isn’t a new phenomenon resulting from the downturn in the U.S. economy; land and housing has always been reasonably priced there.

As a result, people in my hometown tend to buy their houses because mortgage payments are less than what they would pay in rent. This makes financial sense, especially if someone plans to be in a home for more than five years, has a 15 year mortgage (or smaller), is paying less than 5 percent interest on the loan, and property taxes and home owners’ association dues aren’t insanely high. However, not all of the country has housing prices and conditions similar to those in Topeka.

The part of the country where I live is a completely different monster. A comparable house you could buy in Topeka for $100,000 sells here for $650,000 or more based on its proximity to the Metro and downtown and its school district. Buying a house doesn’t always make financial sense, and it certainly doesn’t for my family right now. We have become renters, and are very comfortable with this decision for numerous reasons.

We’re not alone. Slate ran the article “The Rent Isn’t Too Damn High” on Tuesday explaining the economic trends that are turning many people in the country into renters. Simply stated, the American dream may no longer be the American dream. Since the “the national rate of return for homeownership was 1.3 percent” during 1975 and 2009, while “For stocks, it was 3.375 percent,” owning a house has been a far cry from a decent investment.

Additionally, many people don’t want the stress of worrying about a furnace, a roof, or a sewer line. Many jobs are no longer tied to a specific location, and moving every few years can be a very attractive possibility for renters. Sinking money into a house for upkeep and interest on a mortgage can be more than one would pay in rent over three or four years. And, with housing prices on a roller coaster ride, it can be easy to be under water on a mortgage and get trapped in a property that might not meet your needs.

Since I grew up in a community where owning a house is less of a financial risk than it is where I live currently, it took some time for me to see the benefits of renting. I get it now, though, and I’m loving our current situation. We don’t have plans to move across country in the immediate future, but we easily could if we wanted to. We don’t expect the air conditioner to go out on our rental house, but if it does it’s our landlord’s burden to fix, not ours.

Renting isn’t for everyone, and owning still makes sense for a lot of people, but it’s the right decision for us where we live and the point where we are in our lives. Owning a house is no longer a dream of mine, nor is it for many Americans.

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