Hacker News Reader

Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

What does space have to do with renting vs buying? You can rent whole houses, too.

Slightly OT, but when renting a house you don't generally have a lot of security. At the end of your lease (which is typically only a year long), if the landlord wants to move in or rent to someone else or sell the place, you've got to pack up and get out. Moving every year or two can quickly add to the cost.

Note: This obviously applies more to renting an entire house than an apartment in an apartment building.

Why does this `obviously' apply more to houses than to apartments?

Sorry, I am not from the USA, so I don't know the peculiarities of your peculiar housing market.

Couldn't you just negotiate a rental agreement that gives you more protection?

He means that the owner is more likely to sell a single-family home than an entire apartment block. If the apartment does sell, it is 99.99% more likely that the buyer will want to keep the tenants in place.

As for negotiating a better rental agreement? Why would the landlord give you more protection? He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. The reality is that if you're a good tenant (don't trash the place, pay on time), no landlord will want to kick you out if he doesn't have to. I've been a landlord; good tenants are money in the bank!

> As for negotiating a better rental agreement? Why would the landlord give you more protection?

That's why it's called a negotiation. You have to give the landlord something they want in return. E.g. slightly more rent is the most obvious choice.

As for a sale: Just negotiate in your rental agreement that the new owner is bound by the same terms as the old one.

Perhaps you could expand the agreement, and not piss off your landlord.

You'd probably kick you out too if you'd caused enough trouble to overtake the cost of finding and inducting new tenants.

I'm talking about the tradeoffs, with space being one example. You can certainly rent a whole house, at what will most likely be more than the owner's mortgage so if you want to compare apples to apples on the final dollar amount, you're going to have to give up a few things.

The owner is taking on some risk, and hassle. So mortgage plus makes sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com