Should we rent or buy???

Colleen

Colleen

Senior Member
Location
Pennsylvania
My husband and I (73/67) are relocating to CA (to be near our kids) from PA. We have our house listed and will be going out to CA to look for a home.

We're undecided what to look for when we go out. We're on a limited budget and from what I can tell by looking at homes both for rent and for sale in the area we can afford to be in, there really isn't much difference when it comes to a monthly house payment or a monthly rent payment.

Since utilities is a given, the only difference I can figure is a house payment would include taxes, insurance and PMI (since we won't have 20% down). A rental would eliminate that extra.

My way of thinking is, if we bought a house, we need a down payment and closing costs. A rental is a fraction of those costs in getting started.

Is it really necessary at this stage in our lives to have a home to finance for 30 years that we'll never see getting paid for or would it make more dollar-sense to rent and have extra $$$ in our pocket?

My husband is having a hard time thinking about renting a home as opposed to buying. He doesn't want a condo but I think it would be a good idea.

Whatever we look at in CA will be in a 55+ community. That's about the only thing we agree on:)
 

Hubby and I are currently renting (we are in California) for the first time in 45 years-and we are loving it. We had the option to buy or rent this place,it is owned by a group of private investors who own it free and clear. They want to sell it to us and will carry the note but we are still unsure if we want to buy it. It is on a dirt road and we hate that,but otherwise we love it. And we LOVE that when something goes wrong,one call to the landlord gets it fixed. Actually,he lets us cal whoever we want and they bill him. It`s great. We just had to have a new water softener put in-we have horrible water here-and it was $5,000. Was glad I didn`t have to pay that one! Will have to have a new roof before too long and won`t have to pay for it. We may buy it someday but I really don`t know why....
 
If your bank has one it would be good to talk to their investment counselor or perhaps find a CPA to get the right advice, make a mistake here and you might not recover.
 

With a house comes all sort of expenses...but I am sure you know that. I would go the renting route and let the 'upkeep'...lawns, plumbing problems, etc etc fall on the owner. And insurance is expensive... but whatever you do, Good luck and best wishes!
 
I think renting, whether an apartment, condo or house, is a good idea when new to an area....then if you see a small home for sale that's appealing, you can consider buying.
 
marinaio does have a point-especially when coming to California. Prices here just keep going up so if you think you might want to buy,now is the time to do it.
 
David and I have tossed this around a LOT and we think the best thing for us is renting something for at least a year. There's tons of places in our target area so I'm sure when we go out in July we'll know where we want to settle for a while. We'd hate to jump too quickly in buying a house and then find out we hate where we live. Renting for now is our best option :) Of course, EVERTHING hinges on us selling our home here first! We've only had it up for 10 days so it's still a long way from settled here. Who knows....the way the economy is here we may be sitting here next year at this time :(
 
Our kids live in Anaheim/Brea area and we use to live in Riverside. However, we don't want to be in the rat-race any more so we'll be looking more inland. From what I've seen on Trulia and Redfin webs we can afford to live in Menifee/Sun City/Hemet area. Would like to be in Redlands, Murrieta or Temecula but budget won't allow that. We had thought about La Quinta but there's not much that's affordable for us down there.

Where are you at?
 
Too me it would be the most affordable. Owning also is accompanied by many more responsibilities and expenses. Renting gives you less freedom/control but ironically more freedom in that's it's a lot easier to get out of a lease and/or pay penalties than get of a mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance. California along with a lot of other warm weather coastal states have a higher cost of living and California is a bit of a nanny state. Simple repairs in an east coast house are costly repairs on the left coast because of earth quake code. Also California is in a record drought now so your water bill might be more.

I would definitely rent the better part of the year and really get to know the area. You learn much more about an area actually living there than a tourist or visitor.
 
WhatInThe said:
Too me it would be the most affordable. Owning also is accompanied by many more responsibilities and expenses. Renting gives you less freedom/control but ironically more freedom in that's it's a lot easier to get out of a lease and/or pay penalties than get of a mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance. California along with a lot of other warm weather coastal states have a higher cost of living and California is a bit of a nanny state. Simple repairs in an east coast house are costly repairs on the left coast because of earth quake code. Also California is in a record drought now so your water bill might be more.

I would definitely rent the better part of the year and really get to know the area. You learn much more about an area actually living there than a tourist or visitor.
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I agree and I think my husband is coming around to the idea that owning a home is costly and a lot of upkeep, which he's not able (or willing) to do any more. I think once we go out next month and meet up with the realtor there and discuss our concerns and wants, she'll be able to show us some possible locations that might suit us. We're definitely only going to consider rental places in 55+ community's. Not that we don't like kids, but we're past that stage of our lives and we want people our own age around us.
 
One thing I forgot to add. A lot of neighborhoods/houses had their last tax assement during the boom years so look at the purchase history of a potential house to buy. We have a house for sale sitting here for over 6 months last sold during the boom and tax assessed at 9500 dollars a year. The average on that street is about 5k a year with some ranging from 3800 to 6000 a year. Also consider resale value for kids/estate. Would your owned house be something the kids would even want to rent let alone live in. Rent might lower kids inheritance but ownership will leave them something(hopefully no headaches). Big thing learn the area by renting there first, get into and research all those nooks and crannies.
 
WhatInThe said:
One thing I forgot to add. A lot of neighborhoods/houses had their last tax assement during the boom years so look at the purchase history of a potential house to buy. We have a house for sale sitting here for over 6 months last sold during the boom and tax assessed at 9500 dollars a year. The average on that street is about 5k a year with some ranging from 3800 to 6000 a year. Also consider resale value for kids/estate. Would your owned house be something the kids would even want to rent let alone live in. Rent might lower kids inheritance but ownership will leave them something(hopefully no headaches). Big thing learn the area by renting there first, get into and research all those nooks and crannies.
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Yes, there's definitely a lot to consider, especially when we get older. I've been doing a lot of research online about pros and cons of renting/buying at our age and the majority say renting is the best option for us retirees. I'm not so sure we want to buy another house. We'll see. We have to sell this house first.

I don't think our kids would be interested in any house we bought because it wouldn't be in the area they live and work. When we lived in Riverside, CA and we were getting ready to retire and had our house up for sale, we offered it to our kids (to either buy or rent from us) but they weren't interested. Say we buy a house instead of renting and we live in the house for 10 years. There's not going to be much equity built up in that 10 years to make much difference to our kids. They really aren't interested in money from us. They all have good jobs and make out just fine on their own without any help from us so I don't see getting into another mortgage situation.
 

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