Rent or Buy?

If you're stuck in the quandary of, "Should I buy or should I rent?" there are a number of things to consider.  Such considerations may include current interest rates, how long you plan to stay in the home, and what not only the real estate market is doing, but what the rental market is doing as well.  A terrific website I found through The New York Times does an amazing job of running the numbers:  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAPHIC.html?_r=2#

Plug in the relative numbers: rent, purchase price, down payment, interest rate & annual property taxes (figure about 1% of the purchase price) and the program will pull up a timeline showing you at what point it pays off to have bought.  You can play with the home appreciation rates and rent increases to see how they affect the outcome of the numbers.  While we can't say for certain what will happen with the Seattle real estate & rental markets, we can look at how we have done historically and we can watch day-to-day to see what the current trends are.  The real key is that information is knowledge -- get as much of it as you can.