You’ve probably heard this before: if you’re making a monthly rent payment, as opposed to a monthly mortgage payment, you’re essentially throwing your money away. Well, as common as the saying is, it’s not necessarily true – in many situations, it’s actually much more advantageous to rent an apartment rather than own a home. Here’s why:

It’s Easy

Compared to owning a home, living in an apartment rental is incredibly easy. Why do the work yourself when you can enjoy the following benefits:

·        Dedicated property and maintenance staff to call if anything goes wrong

·        No back-breaking snow shoveling, lawn maintenance or pool/sauna care

·        One single monthly rent cheque usually pays for everything (instead of several separate bills and fees when you own a house or a condo)

You Get More for Your Money

Believe it or not, you can usually rent an apartment or house for much less than the cost of buying it – especially if you live in a larger city. And if you want to be right downtown, renting is almost always more affordable than owning a condo (and you get a lot more living space, as well, as downtown apartments are usually much larger than downtown condos).

As well, apartment renters don’t have to come up with the thousands of dollars in down payments, closing costs and fees for things such as building inspections, legal counsel, land transfer taxes and insurance.

And this doesn’t even factor in the cost of borrowing – in the first five years of ownership, most mortgage payments are applied only to the interest, not the capital. This is money that you won’t get back when you sell your home (and you’ll still have all the hassles and extra costs of putting your house on the market).

That Tax Break is Not Guaranteed

Getting a big tax break is supposed to be one of the greatest advantages of owning a home – but you can’t always rely on getting this break. If your annual mortgage interest payment, plus any other deductions you are entitled to, isn’t greater than your standard tax deductions, you will not receive any tax benefit from owning a house.

If you rent an apartment, however, you’ll always receive some form of tax relief, as a large portion of your rent is tax deductible every year.

Maximum Flexibility

Renting provides an enormous amount of flexibility. You can pack up and leave immediately at the end of your lease (which can be monthly or yearly, whatever best suits your lifestyle) – there’s no waiting to sell and no agonizing about the housing market before you move. For many people, the freedom to live where you want and when you want is a huge benefit that simply cannot be overlooked.

Minimum Risk

For homeowners, the stakes are enormously high should their finances crumble. When they can’t pay the mortgage, the lender has great leverage – the house and all the equity invested in it could be in jeopardy. That’s not to say there aren’t consequences if a tenant can’t pay the rent – but the financial devastation that comes with losing your home is far greater than being evicted from your apartment.

In addition, there are several social service programs that are run by all levels of government to help people in need pay their rent so they won’t be evicted. Are the banks as lenient or supportive when it comes time to pay the mortgage?

Ultimately, making the decision to either rent an apartment or buy a home involves much more than simply comparing rental rates, mortgage payments, lease lengths and tax breaks. It’s a combination of all of the personal circumstances happening in your life – both now and several years down the road.



By: Nina Seidl

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Today Real Estate rental is playing vital role all over U.S. and the real estate rental market is a major online business. Most of the people used to look at the local newspaper, TV advertising, and more when it came to finding a home for rent. The internet is now arguably the best tool for searching and finding properties in U.S. whether it may be an apartment for rent, home for rent or lease, condo rentals, vacation rentals, and more. The internet is by far easiest and most productive way of searching and many of the better sites offer multiple photos, virtual tours, maps, brochure printing and complete agent information. This is the reason why, real estate agents, realtors, property owners are opting for internet marketing for advertising their properties and for finding customers. The internet user has more information available to them than a simple print advertisement and this result in a much better inquiry for the realtor or property manager.

There are several sites which offer available homes, apartments, condos and other residential properties for rent and lease throughout the USA. Some internet sites specialize in apartments and others in single family homes. Very few web sites include all types of accommodation that can easily be sorted effectively the only thing a user needs to choose is the best site that provides the right residential property.

Advertisers face a mass of choices when advertising a rental property and because typically rentals do not stay long in the market place for long, home agents and property owners are reluctant to spend money on marketing other than an old fashioned print advertisement in a local paper.

Even today the typical Agent and Owner alike collectively do not consider the amount of time they waste in showing properties that result in an unqualified enquiry from a three or four line advertisement in a newspaper. The time creating a web advertisement with multiple pictures , virtual tours and location maps, not to mention printing brochures, do not seem to justify the time and expense until an agent starts to consider the amount of time they can save by generating a serious enquiry from someone who knows what a property is like inside and out.

Newspapers are starting to become very aware of the problem they face in competing with the internet and now most newspapers have an online presence and place most classifieds and business advertisement online. This however does not compete with the independent professional web site that specializes in a particular marketplace. Some newspapers are now refusing to take advertisements from private advertisers that include a web URL that direct a user to see more information on the internet. The reason given to us in most cases is – “You’re in competition”!

Location maps help a potential renter to see how far they are from work or to take the children to school and online brochure printing helps both the renter and advertising agent.

Larger Apartment complexes are much more available online to view because apartment managers and owners typically always have vacancies available throughout the year. It is definitely worth it for these types of premises to spend a major portion of their advertising budget for web sites and an online presence in the major rental national web sites to help fill these vacancies. The most difficult part for the potential renter is being able to see the type and interior of the actual unit available and not just a generic show unit, typically advertised to draw them in. Very often this type of approach leads to a lot of wasted time for both renter and agent when the type of unit they see online is not typical of the units available. Ideally web sites should be able to display a wide selection of units available as possible and not show rented units or units not current or readily available for rent.

Many potential renters find also that a lot of inventory on some very reputable web sites are out of date, just been rented, and sometimes blatantly advertised as available just to be told by the agent “ that’s ones just rented but I have ten others just like that one to show you if you’d like to come in I’ll show you around” The reason agents and property owners advertise properties to indicate that a home is available is to generate an enquiry in the hope that they will rent another similar unit or home to the person enquiring. It saves the advertiser time in keep uploading new properties online and paying again for a second, third or sometimes a lot more advertisements. This type of advertising strategy is not helpful to either the agent or the client in terms of lost time.

Internet sites with high impact web pages, with multiple photos, maps, virtual tours, with unrestricted viewing, and easy online control of properties rented and active by the advertiser are now becoming more prominent as both the advertiser and renter become more educated in the use of the internet. Older and established web sites that rely on limited information, user registrations to view property, thumbnail photos, or even no photos, are losing market share and newer, and easier to use web sites are fast becoming more popular in the ever changing world of the internet.

After all the internet is primarily an information tool first and if a user cant find the information that will entice them to your product whatever it may be then they will definitely go somewhere else where they can find it. Time is an all important part of today’s world and if it saves time then that’s the way everyone wants to do it.



By: David Graham

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