Latest: Buy, Don’t Rent

• February 25, 2009

by Mark Wellborn

A prolonged period of declining home prices across the country is tipping the scales in favor of buying a home versus renting in certain markets, the Wall Street Journal reports.

From The Journal:

“At the height of the housing boom, as home prices surged, demand for rentals started to rise as the gap between owning and renting widened significantly. Even after the housing market soured, apartment demand grew as former homeowners became renters, allowing landlords to push healthy rent increases. Now, after two years of rapid home-price depreciation, the relationship between the cost of rental payments versus after-tax mortgage payments is tilting toward ownership in a number of metropolitan areas.”

Green Street Advisors, a Newport Beach based real estate consultancy, said that, over the past 18 years, after-tax mortgage payments have averaged 26 percent more than rent payments. The firm now says that the ratio is below its 18-year average in over half of the top 50 housing markets, including Northern Virginia. Calls from UrbanTurf to Green Street Advisors to see where DC proper ranked were not immediately returned.

For the full article, click here.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/latest_buy_dont_rent/583