> If home values crash where you live then you spent years putting money towards a worthless asset.
It's still a roof over my head regardless of how much it's worth. And more importantly, how much it's worth is completely irrelevant unless/until you want to sell. And if you do want to sell, and home values have crashed, then the next house you buy will also be cheap!
Yes, but are we splitting the payments between principle and interest? In most cases, after a number of years, the rental cost easily exceeds interest + insurance + tax for the same size property.
Yes, it often seems the rental cost will be less than your monthly payments, but do realize that you lose all the rental cost, but not all your monthly payment.
Its simple to demonstrate scenarios where a loss in property value ends up being more expensive for the homeowners than renters in the long run. We had a crisis in 2008 because of this.
There are online rent vs buy calculators that you can use to generate these scenarios.
It's still a roof over my head regardless of how much it's worth. And more importantly, how much it's worth is completely irrelevant unless/until you want to sell. And if you do want to sell, and home values have crashed, then the next house you buy will also be cheap!