Are you better to buy a home or rent one.

Everyone needs a home to live in. Not many people will argue with this. Whether they rent their home or own that home on the other hand, is not so universally agreed upon. Since we all have to face this decision at some point, we decided to take a moment and cover some of the realities of both options with the goal of helping you decide which option is best for you.
 
Now for a bit of a spoiler alert: As realtors the Messecar Team will openly admit that we do have a bit of a bias. Now that we have that out of the way we still do recognize that there are legitimate arguments that can be made for both sides of the equation.
 
Renting
 
Probably the ultimate advantage that renting offers over home ownership is that it involves less commitments, and obligations than ownership does, which in turn allows renters a higher degree of flexibility.
 
When a renter tires of living where they live, doesn’t like the way the neighbourhood is going, is transferred to a new city or any of the multitude of reasons people choose to move there isn’t really anything holding them down. They simply wait till their rental period ends and away they go.
 
Another major plus for renting is the financial consistency it offers. Renters always know exactly what they will be paying because rental terms effectively set your monthly payment amount for the duration of your rental period.
 
Further to this last point, renters don’t have to deal with the financial curveballs homeowners do…
 

• Did your roof start leaking?
• Did the furnace break down?

 
Renters don’t have to deal with those issues (or expenses!).
 
Buying
 
Now for the benefits of buying.

There is no shortage of benefits to buying and owning a home, and we’ll start with probably the biggest pro-ownership argument that exists. Monthly rent payments contribute to a landlord’s wealth. Monthly mortgage payments contribute to your own personal wealth.
 
Home owners can go to bed every night knowing that every single mortgage payment they make is building personal equity for themselves, and not their landlord. This on its own is often all the reason anyone needs to justify buying over renting.
 
As good as this is, if you take it one step further, buying offers a direct path to a dream of many… living mortgage free.
 
Each homeowner is progressively counting down to the day that they fully pay off their home and their mortgage payments disappear forever. When you achieve this it is a life transforming day that renters, who are destined to permanent monthly payments, never reach.

So as you can see there are arguments for both renting or owning and each person needs to decide which is the better option for themselves.