renting v. buying?

What would be better -- renting a house or buying?  We will be arriving at the end of Sept. and at first we thought we'd rent for a few months while we looked for a place to buy.  We are in the process of selling our house in Minnesota right now, and are seriously reconsidering if we want to go through the same thing when we leave the UK in a few years.  We are planning on staying for at least 2, but possibly 3 or 4 years.  We also have a dog (7 yo Basset Hound) that we are taking with us.  I know that might be an obstacle to renting, but maybe not so much if we were renting long term.  We definitely want to be in a house, but I've seen lots of different homes for rent on various property letting websites.

I guess I just want peoples' opinions on whether it would be worth the hassle of buying a home, or if a long-term rental would be the way to go.

Thanks so much!

Stephanie

What would be better -- renting a house or buying?  ...

The housing market in the UK is pretty crazy right now, with rents barely enough to cover the cost of financing by the owner.  Prices were high at the start of 2002, but have roared away since.  The concensus is generally that prices can't carry on climbing like this, and the likely outcome will be an "adjustment" ie tears for those who bought as the peak was near.

If you are only planning to stay a couple of years then I would strongly recommend that renting is the way to go.  You will pay no more than if you had a mortgage, and you will not be exposed to the very real possibility of a price crash.  If you put down 20%, and prices fall by 20% you will have lost everything.  This happened to many people in the UK in the early 1990's and many people, me included, think it could happen again.

I am glad we sold recently and got our money out of the UK housing market.  

another advantage of renting is that we got to know the area we wanted to live a LOT better.

when we first moved from one side of london to the other, we looked at a few places and went exploring. what we thought were 'good' areas turned out to be good during the day and horrible at night.  you can also see if a place suits you enough.

however saying that, if you find a decently priced house and you already know where you want to live, mortgage rates are very good right now, though our mortgage advisor told us we needed to stay a minimum of 3 years to try and at least break even, and even that now might be tricky since market analysts seem to be at odds on whether there is going to be a house price crash or not in the coming year.  all i know is that there is apparently more houses for sale in the past 6 months in our area than there has been for the 2 years prior to that!

good luck with your decision...if you need to rent, look for an unfurnished house nearer the countryside. a better chance of the landlord allowing a pet.

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