People get lost in discussions about interest rates, market values, and locations. I try to steer clear of those topics; if I do participate, then I always express the reasons I believe owning your own home are important. Owning a “piece of the rock,” changes you both personally and financially for the better. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.”
One of the reasons I think it’s better to own than rent is the problem with landlords.
Today on both Craigslist Housing Forum and in the NYTimes.com real estate section there are stories of people having problems with their landlords.
In Craigslist, the person is worried about being evicted from his apartment. Why? Because he turned on the heat when his landlord refused to! More here:
CL Housing Forum Eviction thread
A young couple renting an apartment in Fort Greene finally had enough of bad conditions; they purchased a Co-Op apartment. Here’s a quote from the NYTimes.com article, and a link to the same:
“Two years ago, they moved together to a one-bedroom rental in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It was in bad shape, with flaking paint and crooked windows. The basement storage room was dank and moldy. With one shared closet, ‘I had so many more clothes that Harry felt he was having short shrift,’ Ms. Marquez said. Considering the apartment’s condition, it seemed expensive, at $1,580 a month.
Ms. Marquez, health editor at Woman’s Day magazine, was sick of ‘dumpy apartments with landlords who were not leaping to fix things,’ she said. ‘I wanted my own place where I could do whatever I wanted, and if something went wrong I could rely on myself to get it done.'”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/realestate/06hunt.html