Is it better to rent or buy a house? Renting a property can be a better financial decision than buying a house. If you’ve been thinking about purchasing a house but don’t have enough money to get on the property ladder—you might rent. There are a few reasons why renting might be the right move for you.
9 Reasons Why Renting Is Better Than Buying A House?
Below are the top reasons why it is better to rent than buy a house in the cities.
1. Move when you please
When you rent an apartment or house, you have the freedom to move whenever you want without having to worry about selling your property first. If you hate the neighborhood, just pick it up and go somewhere else.
If your boss downsized your position and sent you across town, just move closer to work. Renting lets you be mobile when other parts of your life are falling apart or being upgraded.
Another advantage of renting is that when things are great in other areas of your life, but the landlord is being a dick, there’s nothing keeping you there other than inertia. If he raises your rent by 20% and starts giving out parking tickets like candy
2. No real estate commission and closing costs
In buying a house, there are many costs that come along with purchasing a house.
There is the down payment, mortgage insurance, closing costs, and real estate commission. There can be thousands of Naira on top of the actual price of the house.
While it may seem better to buy than rent, renting has its own set of benefits. One of them is no real estate commission and closing costs. You can easily save thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, by not buying rather than renting.
3. The convenience of living close to work
If you live close to work or can work from home, that can save you a lot of time and stress.
If you rent an apartment, you have the freedom to pick a place with the right combination of cost and convenience.
You might choose to live near your job so you can walk or bike there, or you might find a neighborhood with great restaurants and entertainment so you don’t have to spend as much going out.
If you want to move closer to family or change jobs that require a long commute, renting lets you do that without tying yourself down to one location.
4. No ownership responsibilities and work
Renting is better than buying a house because you do not have to deal with ownership responsibilities. Once you sign a lease agreement, the only things that you have to worry about are paying your rent and utilities on time and making sure that your apartment does not have any damages.
Being responsible for your tenants alone if you own a house is a big one to take if you love total freedom also if you own a house, it comes with a lot of hidden responsibilities many people want to run away from.
5. Rent is cheaper in the long run
Renting a home is cheaper than buying one in the long run, new research has found.
When you rent, your landlord pays for the home and property taxes and some of the homeowner’s insurance. When you buy, you pay all of those costs yourself.
Buying a home is something that most people aspire to do. After all, who wouldn’t want to build equity in their own house? The problem with buying a home is that it’s expensive.
Not only do you have to come up with a down payment, but homeownership comes with many additional costs that are often unexpected. These costs can make it difficult for some people to pay their mortgage every month.
6. Rent Has Predictable Costs
When you decide to rent, it is possible to know your monthly or yearly expenditures in the house because they do not increase monthly rents unpredictably.
If your rent is starting at N10,000 per month, it is possible for the landlord to make a 5% increase in the next 2 years which is very predictable.
7. Investment Opportunity
Better to rent a small apartment and invest your money elsewhere. By renting instead of buying, you’re freeing up money.
You could well invest the money you should have used to purchase a house into stock markets, owning digital real estate, transportation, and other growing digital economies and technologies to maximize profits before eventually owning a property at convenience without worrying about mortgage loans.
8. No Maintenance costs
Renting frees you from worrying about all the maintenance that comes with owning a home. When you rent a house, the landlord handles all the maintenance.
That’s a good thing because it can be really expensive to fix stuff in a home. In fact, property owners have been known to take out second mortgages on their homes just to pay for repairs.
You don’t want to go there! Renting frees you from that worry. If the furnace breaks, the landlord takes care of it. If a pipe bursts, he’ll fix it. If the roof needs replacing, he’ll cover it, and if the toilet is full, he’ll evacuate it.
9. Lower Utility Costs
In renting, the whole apartment residents get to share the utility bills issued to the apartment since they are shared responsibilities, reducing how much you could spend on utilities monthly. Utilities such as electricity bills, water supply bills, and LAWMA for Lagosians.
Takeaways: Monthly rent is the most cost-effective way to live for many people. This blog post was hard for me because it involves an investment thesis that I do not agree with, but I wanted to put it out there for this class — so you can go ahead and read it.
Conclusion
If you’re like most people, this is your first time renting. You might think that it’s not that much different from living in an apartment or a house that you own. However, there are many advantages to renting when you’re just starting out.
