plus/minus epsilon

The conclusion of my previous post was that whether to rent or buy in my area likely comes down more to individual factors rather than financial ones. But what was interesting to me while doing that analysis, is that I realized I honestly had no interest in buying a condo that’s roughly equivalent to my current apartment.

A while ago, I tweeted that “it’s essentially always cheaper to rent in urban areas than it is to buy property.” I believe this is conventional wisdom called the Rule of 16, where you divide the price of a house by the yearly rent of a similar apartment. If the ratio is over 16, it’s “better” to rent in that area than it is to buy and vice versa. I’m not sure where that rule came from and I’ll try to derive it later, but I decided to check this assumption by modeling it.