I'm about to hit the big 5-0 and my wife & I are starting to look at where we want to be when we become empty nesters in about 5 years. The easy answer is to roll the equity in our current home to a Villages home and keep on chugging. But not so fast.
According to
this article the decision to rent vs buy is far from a slam dunk for 'buy'.
The prime factors I see are:
- How long you intend to stay in the home.
On the buying side, the shorter time you plan to stay in a home, the more money is eaten up by closing costs, agent commissions, remodeling, etc. In our case, our child will go off to college and we MIGHT move to wherever she ends up to be near any grandchildren. So we could be in TV from four to eight years and then move away.
- The Price-to-Rent ratio.
TV is a vacation area and rents vary greatly seasonally. I poked around in Zillow a bit, but it was hard to get a feel for the P/R for longer term leases.
- Appreciation
If the article is to be believed, over the long run, home prices don't outpace inflation measurably. From what I've seen of TV, they are building new homes so fast with no end in sight, that it appears resales go for about the same as new. Maybe at some point FL will put a moratorium on new construction for environmental reasons and that will make the prices shoot up. But in the mid-term, I don't see a lost opportunity cost for holding out on buying.
One of the things that's impressed me about TV people is that many "do their homework" and did a lot of research before moving to TV. Anyone care to share any of the financial homework you've done or have seen others do on the rent vs buy in TV equation?