I will always choose owning over renting. I want to wake up in the morning in my own house, not someone else’s.
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I live in two homes that I own free and clear and rent out several homes. The raw truth is that while you may not owe money to a mortgage company the house isn’t really yours, you are just renting it from the government. Stop paying your exorbatant taxes and see what happens.
One of my rentals is a cell tower lot. It barely covers my property taxes each year. One rental I had this past summer required well over 20k to get it ready for the next renter. The first months rent takes care of the insurance, the second takes care of the property tax and the third takes care of the fee to be a landlord in my county and the business license my town requires to be a landlord. If I don’t live two more years I won’t make any money on the income of the house. That being said however in the 20 years I have had most of my houses they have trippled in value according to the county valuation assessment, what a scam that is.
I don’t think a person could make anywhere near the value of the house appreciation by investing the difference between rent and owning. Renting is likely a little cheaper in many ways but once you throw in the increased value from appreciation there is no contest.
I have a relative that had a bought an empty lot, and built a building for his small business. The lot had some unused land behind it. Twenty some years ago a guy walked up to the business and talked to him about putting up some sort of tower. Something about communications. Originally telling the guy to get lost, the guy did say they’d pay him for it, and said yes. For more the next twenty years they were paid handsomely each month for having that a cell tower on his property. The payments continued long after the business closed and he leased the building, and settled into retirement. Turns out that wireless telephones would later catch on…