I notice that a lot of people tend to assume that renting = tiny, tiny apartment, whereas owning = big, big house. I suppose that must be true in some areas, but in various parts of the DC metro area (where I live), you find tiny, tiny condos for sale, big, big houses for rent, and all manner of things in between. So just because you don’t need or want much space, doesn’t mean you *have* to rent, if you don’t want to. But to do as you suggest – and have housing that just meets your needs your whole life long – it’s probably more convenient to be a lifelong renter.

I am a big fan of the “rent versus buy” calculators that account for what would happen if you take the money you would have used as a down payment and invest it instead. Suddenly owning becomes much less advantageous in a lot of situations.

Really, though, a big part of my reason for renting rather than owning is that there’s a very specific location (we’re talking a few square blocks) where I want to live, and apartments for rent are what happen to be here. If there’d been condos for sale instead, I’d probably be living in one of those.

Johanna – although we own our current house, we’re leaning toward renting as we grow older. We’ve been looking into what the crossover point would be (our age & estimated continued lifespan) where it would be to our benefit to sell whatever house we’re in at that time & keep the proceeds, paying our rent out of that $ & investing the rest to be available if needed for other expenses.

So maybe buying a house offers more ways to “save money and get return value” than renting does, but on the flip side of that, there are also more ways to *waste* money and *not* get anything in return. With my rented apartment, I know exactly what my housing cost will be each month (until August 2012, anyway, and since my landlord has a history of not sticking his tenants with huge rent increases, I have a pretty good idea of what it will be after that). And if I ever decide to move, I know exactly when I’ll be able to do so (my lease is up at the same time every year, and getting a new resident for the apartment is my landlord’s problem, not mine), and I know almost exactly what impact that will have on my financial situation (the difference between forfeiting my entire security deposit and getting all of it back is about the equivalent of a rounding error in the selling price of a house). So if I’m giving up the chance to “save” money by not wasting it, that’s fine with me.

Pat