While researching for home buying tips, I ran across several articles and calculators on the topic of buying a home versus renting. One of the better tools was provided by NY Times in their financial section.
The calculator allows you to enter in your current rent, potential price of a home, and various other factors that correlate to home ownership.
These tools seem fine and dandy, but they exclude some common reasons for buying a home such as space, greater control over your home, and location. Each of which is going to have a varying value to you. I can understand that if you’re moving from a 4 bedroom apartment to a 4 bedroom home you can compare apples to apples. If you’re moving out of a 2 bedroom apartment into a 4 bedroom home, does this calculation make sense? It’s more than likely it will take longer to reap the benefits of owning a home. Without this additional level of context, these tools simply confuse people on what home ownership means.