Own. I saved for years because I didn’t ever want to rent again.

I managed to buy a small house during the weird financial stuff going on during covid

Same, except I got lucky and managed to buy right before covid. Was able to take advantage of the weird financial stuff and re-finance less than a year into my mortgage, though. Worked out pretty well. Went from a 20-year fixed at 4% to a 15-year fixed at 2.8%.

Own outright. That means pay off the mortgage. To get there I purchase at a price I can get a 15 year mortage but actually get a 30 year mortgage with the intention of paying as if its a 15. Take a few months at 30 to build up an emergency fund but once its well funded do the pay like its a 15 thing. Back off during emergencies. Im unemployed and reducing my expenses to bare bones. This means getting a place much poorer than the typical person at your income level. If you can’t afford doing this expect to be underwater during a crises.

I have a mortgage, which we like to call “owning” but is really me renting-to-own from the bank.

I vastly prefer this to just renting. At least a portion of the money I spend on housing is going towards something I will eventually own (20+ years from now).

Rent. I move cities every 3-5 years chasing my dream job though so… yeah, rent it is. I’m looking to possibly also lose the current job as well, so it’s also rent as far into the future as I can see.

On the bright side, I don’t have to pay for any appliances 🤷‍♂️.

I am just grateful not to have to pack up my life every year and relocate to the next lease.

I own and 100% it’s what I want. This is pretty much my dream house and I would burn it to the ground before I let someone else live here.

Own.

Upsides:

• Equity
• Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me
• Room for activities
• Big yard for family and pets
• If something needs maintaining, I don’t have to depend on someone else to “get around to it.”

Downsides:

• Property taxes are high (but almost all of it goes to the school district, and our district is really good, lots of focus on music and theater)
• Appliances, HVAC, fixtures, carpet: shit’s expensive, yo
• If something needs maintaining, I can’t just push it off on someone else
• Less flexibility if I want to move (thankfully, I don’t, but who knows what tomorrow will bring anymore)

We’ve been homeowners for decades now, there’s really no going back, but I don’t miss renting at all. Full disclosure, our rental time was always in apartments, never in a single-family home. My in-laws rented a single-family for a few years after a foreclosure, and it didn’t seem any different from our ownership. If I was to go back to renting, it would be that. No more apartments for me.

Own. Actually we bought our first house in 1998 at age 22 not because we wanted to, but because prices were rising fast and we felt that we might miss our window if we waited longer. It was severely in need of renovation, and we did just that in a few months with a lot if help from friends and family. Sold the house and bought another house in 2000, which was at that time about seventy years old and showing it’s age (basically barely inhabitable). We did some major rebuilding from 2002 until 2004, and have been improving it on and off ever since, always saving up money in between. I like it this way, we’ve got a house we could have never afforded 25 years ago, but do have the same mortgage costs we had in 2000. You have to be handy to do it this way though.

Still mortgaged, but that’s what ownership looks like in the US, mostly.

And, yeah, fuck paying someone for something they can take away with minimum warning. A home is just too fundamental a need for me. A home that someone else controls is not the same thing at all, on the level that matters in that regard.

Own. Bought a house as-is and fixed it up. Well, am in the process of fixing it up.

Own.

100% what we want, our mortgage is about 60% what the rent would be for a similar home.

We got fortunate as first time home buyers, there’s a grant that allows all the way down to a 3% down payment, which was still unaffordable… until my partner got in a car wreck, and got quite a lot from the settlement. (Shes all right, played it up slightly) She covered almost the entire down payment, so our split of the mortgage is more of a 2/1 ratio, but I make more so it works out.

We’ve calculated the number of payments it will take for us to equal her initial down payment with my contributions, then at that point we’ll shift to a 1/1 for the mortgage.

Unless we get married first, then our finances get more mingled and tricky lol. We’ll see!

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Wanted to own working towards bringing living expenses to zero. But that’s not possible so I’m happy renting. Not having to deal with any stress of maintaining a place is liberating in its own right

I want the capital to make the option a real choice for tge average American.

I own but I bought at the wrong time and now $100k in the red. Fun times.