Final winner: BUY

• Gains from investing principle in S&P500: 60%
• Change in home price: 72%
• Increase in cash from purchase to sale: 300%

At the end of March 2018 my wife and I bought a house.  You can start here to read about the process.  I’m going to record the costs so everyone can look back and determine whether buying a house was a good deal or really expensive.  In the past renting has been great.  You can read all about the rules in my article, but essentially you’ll only find stuff that wouldn’t be needed if we were renters. The NYT has a calculator to help determine whether renting or buying makes more sense for you.

2022 Update:

We sold the house and due to a historic hot market we managed to have a huge windfall. If you bought another home today I’m not sure if you’d be as lucky, but you never know. Investing in the stock market over the ownership period would have had a 60% return. Not bad for a bit over 3 years including a pandemic. It sounds all great, but the downside of ownership was dealing with repairs caused by the Texas freeze. Since it is our house we had to figure everything out. However, damage was so common that even renters were impacted and several had to move out and figure out alternative living situations. Overall, ownership was great and we were very lucky to get in before prices jumped. However, with property taxes at >2% of the assessed value I’m not sure if owning in Austin is going to be great long-term. I guess the future will tell.