The credit is much more difficult to get now than 10 years ago, that's true, so unless you have your own capital to invest it might be hard to be able to buy.
If you can afford to buy, I think it's the best way to go in almost any situation. I can't ever imagine leasing a car, for example. I would rather be making payments towards something that will eventually become my asset.
One difference between renting real estate and leasing a car is that real estate usually appreciates in value, and you can often also turn around and lease it to someone else if you're the owner. Cars usually depreciate rapidly in value, and are not such a great investment in most cases. Many people are able to lease cars and write the payments off as a business expense, and will return the leased vehicle every couple of years or so for a new model or whatever. But leasing a car does have glitches that you should be aware of. Of course it's never a bad idea to buy a car with cash or very low / zero interest (if you can get it) and drive it for ten years - assuming it remains reliable and not costly to keep up. Generally the less $ you spend on vehicles overall, the better. Most people do it the wrong way - they go out and buy or lease as much vehicle as they possibly can to impress everyone, and they end up putting lots of extra $ into cars that they could be investing in appreciating assets, which of course is not the smartest thing to do.
That's a very important difference JR, buying a house is buying something which value will increase, while if you're just renting you're just giving the money to the owner, you're not investing, you're spending.
I would consider the amount of property tax that I have to pay every month as well as the viability of the property to get sold later on at a good price. If the property tax is very high but I think it's really worth spending on because I can sell the property well later on anyway, I would not mind having to spend that much. However, if I think I won't be able to get back my investment on the property tax, I would probably just opt to rent out as that will be much cheaper for me overall.
Actually in my country taxes are paid by the year and they have increased drastically in the last years, so it's now a huge thing to consider because depending on the area of you home you can pay hundreds if not thousands of euros.
That would be a lot easier if you could pay monthly instead of yearly. So if you have already paid for the house, the property taxes still keep rising every year?
Yeah, property taxes are a constant in owning a home, at least in the US. That's why a 0.25% increase is a big deal, and often gets media attention. It's the main source of income for local government.
Yep, those are independent things, being paying for a house and paying the taxes. It's like when you have a mortgage, you still have to pay taxes because for all effects it's your property.
I don't know what's the point in taxes over property, we already made our investment in buying the house and all the legal taxes from the acquisition, why should we now be forced to pay tax over property? Never ending taxes...
