If you can buy low and sell high it’s worth it. Especially if you’re positioned to buy when you can lock in low mortgage rates. Above 6% you might be better off putting your down payment into the stock market and renting.
It’s also more likely that you’ll feel good about spending money to improve the home if you think you can get the money back when you sell. (And then you get to live in a more pleasant place for years)
> Especially if you’re positioned to buy when you can lock in low mortgage rates. Above 6% you might be better off putting your down payment into the stock market and renting.
"Locking in" a rate for multiple decades is mostly (only?) an American thing:
Also true in the US, the term of art here is "refinancing". Just about every homeowner I knew during Covid refinanced and now has a rock-bottom interest rate on their mortgage.
The downside of doing that is you end up "locked in" to the property too. They now have a strong disincentive to sell, because they'll lose that sweet sweet interest rate and relatively low payment. I'm unsure what the broader effect is on the market.
Squeezing out the expected amount of money, making it even more exhausting.
Guessing what your yearly house-owning costs will be, and what the market will be when you sell, is in the realm of crystal ball scrying. Sure, you might be able to guess "reasonable" estimates, but individual instances aren't necessarily near the mean value.
It’s also more likely that you’ll feel good about spending money to improve the home if you think you can get the money back when you sell. (And then you get to live in a more pleasant place for years)