Is It Better to Rent or Buy a Home?

How to decide whether to rent a house or apartment or purchase a home or condo. What has been the financial return from owning a house?

Topics covered include:

• How much have home prices increased in major cities since 1980
• What drove the greater than 50% jump in home prices in some U.S. cities since 2020
• Why there aren't more new starter homes
• What will it take for the housing shortage to abate so houses can be more affordable
• Why now could be a more advantageous time to rent versus buy
• What academics estimate the long-term return is for owning a house, and why the calculations are incomplete
• How to determine what your total cost of ownership is for buying a house in order to compare it to renting

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Show Notes

The housing theory of everything by John Myers & Ben Southwood & Sam Bowman—Works in Progress

Irish property: the boom that shows no signs of slowing by Jude Webber—The Financial Times

Whatever Happened to the Starter Home? by Emily Badger—The New York Times

The Housing Revolution Is Coming by M. Nolan Gray—The Atlantic

In Today’s Housing Market, It’s Timing Over Location by Joe Pinsker—The Wall Street Journal

The Rate of Return on Real Estate: Long-Run Micro-Level Evidence by David Chambers, Christophe Spaenjers, and Eva Steiner—Oxford Academic

The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015 by Òscar Jordà, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor—National Bureau of Economic Research

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