Yeah, but Forbes is full of shit and you know it. Let's take my neighbors downstairs. They're teachers. They've got student loans. They live in a 2 bedroom condo with their 3-year-old son and their nine month old twin daughters. This is obviously an untenable situation so it's a good thing they were able to get their inlaws to loan them a 20% downpayment on their $350k condo in 2008. But now it's 2015 and they need another bedroom. And while their condo will likely sell for $500k (they actually got an offer of $75k over ask - but they had to do some chicanery with cash payments and the like because the bank won't actually loan that much over appraisal), the 3-br replacement for their condo is $650-700k. Take out some closing costs and the like and even though they've got a foot on the property ladder, they have to ask their parents for more money for another down payment. Forbes is basically saying "If you have six figures of liquidity, mortgages are easy to get" which is about the greatest "no shit sherlock" of a statement any financial journal has ever made. I'm looking in my building. Same exact floorplan, except they have the shitty deck while I have the dope one. There's a 3BR down the hall going for the bargain price of $550k ('cuz it's rough - and it'll still go for wildly over ask). And if I can put $110k down, I'll only pay $300/mo more to live there than I do here!Nationally, buying is 38% cheaper than renting with a traditional 20% down, 30-year mortgage. Buying is an even better deal with a 15-year mortgage, but not as favorable with less money down.
Sure, and that's a big part of the problem--that with the advent of large student debt and stagnant wages (plus untenable inflation in the rental market), no one can afford to save up for a down payment anymore. I'm not arguing that buying is easy; I was just responding to the previous poster's claim that people should be putting the difference between rental and mortgage payments into savings. I'm trying to make the assertion that the difference isn't there, and that this is just one more reason people with less money are buttfucked right now. I think we're on the same side here.
'k. I stand by my statement: even with a down payment, prices are so exuberant right now that it's cheaper to rent even without the externalities. That may not have been true in 2014 but it's been a damn ski jump around here and every market I monitor is chockablock with renters bitching about house prices.