If you are comparing rent to mortgage, it’s appropriate to compare the rent to just the interest portion of the mortgage (you are not using your rent to buy the property, nor are you using the interest payment to buy the property).

The tax thing – agreed, but you ignore the tax break for a mortgage, I claim they cancel each other out. (You can never know for sure – I get a tax break anyway because I have a home office…maybe I’d run into AMT, maybe not).

Then there’s possible depreciation. Yes, if you know for sure that house prices are dropping this is a huge swinger, but you don’t – nobody does. They SHOULD, but we don’t know for sure they will.

I think 3 years is the clincher for me – I know the cost of moving in only too well, I don’t want to pay the cost of buying a house over only 3 years.