One thing you're not considering is that buying a home ties you down to a particular area. With the jobs market the way it is, jobs for life a mythical thing for most people, and major structural shifts in employment, buying a house is not really an option for most people. Also, I'm not sure there's that much credit availability for consumers wanting a mortgage and it'd certainly involve a major upfront deposit.
To get to a $3k/month payment on a 500k apartment unit, the author assumes that people have $100,000 in cash to drop on a down payment. People renting often don't have that much cash on hand and are already trying to pay their school loans.
You have completely ignored the effect falling interest rates have had on buying power and thus nominal home prices.<p>Absent something extraordinary, watch out when rates rise. Affordability will be crushed quickly, and absent rising incomes, prices will have to fall.<p>One could argue we'll see a Japan-style era of low rates, but in your article you're urging folks to "Buy now before it's too late!". If rates spike suddenly, this will be a very, very bad time to be long such a levered investment.
The math in this post is funky and one-sided.<p>Is $3k/mo a good price to pay for a place to live? To answer that question you would need to know the alternatives:<p>* how much does it cost to rent the same apartment?
* if you have $100,000 on hand, what is the ROI of other investments you could make?<p>Whether buying your home is a good idea is much more involved than a short blog post and always comes down to individual circumstances.
I have an issue with this article. How many people have $100k available in their bank account? I've never been over $50k of remotely liquid assets.<p>That said, I received helped from my parents for the down payment and couldn't be happier of the move to mortgage over rental.