Sirinyay

Slate’s Annie Lowrey makes the case that renting is better than owning for many Americans. As she points out,

Indeed, dozens of recent studies have shown that, excepting the go-go bubble years, houses tend not to make very good investments at all: A prospective homebuyer would have made more money taking her down payment, parking it in inflation-adjusted Treasury bonds, and renting.

Of course, there are those for whom it makes sense to own. Ms. Lowrey herself is a condo owner. But Juan and I are renters, and proudly so. I have seen the fallacies associated with homeownership in my parents. If they weren’t tied down to their house in the Valley, surely as traffic congestion worsened in LA, and definitely after my mom took a job in San Pedro, they would have moved. Juan and I, on the other hand, have the flexibility of relocating near jobs, and the leverage to afford housing in a walkable neighborhood proximate to transit. As the research bears out, we are not borrowing from our futures; in fact, because we are able to easily relocate to better paying jobs, perhaps we are enhancing our futures.