To Rent or to Buy? →
A new academic article in Real Estate Economics turns this conventional wisdom on its head. Using data from 1979 to 2009, the authors demonstrate that renting was the superior investment strategy for most of the past 30 years. Counterintuitive as the finding may be to some, it is actually quite logical. Unless someone possesses the cash necessary to buy a residence, he or she will be renting one way or another. The choice is between renting the property directly or instead renting the capital necessary to buy the property. The amount of capital to be rented is a function of house prices, while the bulk of a mortgage payment is interest, which is the rental payment on this capital. After 2 years, the typical 30-year amortizing mortgage balance has been reduced by less than 3%. This means that a household that took out a $300,000 mortgage with a 5% interest rate to buy a home has only reduced its mortgage balance by $8,600 after two years despite spending nearly $39,000 in total over this period.
... Importantly, the authors make clear that in general, renting is only the superior financial choice if the renting household has the discipline to invest its marginal savings into financial assets. Renting generates residual savings because the cash outlays tied to housing consumption (or purchase) are lower. But if renting households, or the individuals themselves lack the discipline to save this money, and instead increase non-housing consumption, any wealth gains will clearly disappear. The basic intuition is that the principal portion of mortgages is what usually leads to more wealth. But as this article shows, that’s because it represents incremental savings not because of anything intrinsic to the mortgage itself. Viewed in this light, the economic gains come not from “owning” a home but rather the forced savings generated by the principal portion of the monthly mortgage payment.
It is instructive that at the end of the analysis, the much-touted economic gains from homeownership really come from the forced savings of an amortizing mortgage. And this benefit only accrues to myopic households that would not otherwise save.
This entry was tagged. Home Ownership