Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Renting money

I love this quote (from http://patrick.net/housing/crash3.html):
"If you don't own a house but want to live in one, your choice is to rent a house or rent money to buy a house. To rent money is to take out a loan. A mortgage is a money-rental agreement. House renters take no risk at all, but money-renting owners take on the huge risk of falling house prices, as well as all the costs of repairs, insurance, property taxes, etc. Since you can rent a house for 2% of its price, but have to pay 6% to borrow the equivalent amount of money, it is much cheaper to rent the house than to rent the money."
It's true.. you can rent a place to live, or, you can rent money, at a higher cost and alot of risk, to get a place to live.

That's why I sold my pr0perty and now am a happy renter.