ATLANTA — The 50 largest metro areas in America all have at least one thing in common, it is more expensive to buy a starter home than rent on a month-to-month basis.
The report from Realtor.com examined the 50 top metro areas and compared the median monthly payment for a starter home with apartments.
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“We found that in all 50 of the 50 largest us metros, it is more affordable to rent than to buy a home in today’s market,” says Hannah Jones, Realtor.com senior economic research analyst. “A combination of elevated mortgage rates and climbing home prices have made it such that buying a home is just so much more expensive than renting in a majority of us.”
The report found that Atlanta was in the middle of the pack. The average monthly payment for a starter home costs around $840 more a month than renting.
“We saw the cost of purchasing a home that monthly payment is 52 percent higher than the rent,” Jones said.
Those numbers are not a surprise to Cedrick Thomas.
“You see the prices...$400,000, $500,000, starting at $700′s,” Thomas said. “It’s not even worth looking at it because you couldn’t even afford it.”
Thomas is 26 and college-educated but does not know if homeownership will ever be in his future.
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“I did want to own a home, but getting older, it’s getting less and less feasible. It’s looking like renting is the better option all around,” Thomas said.
He says the American dream of owning a home with a white picket fence may be long gone and replaced with something much more basic.
“It’s now if you have a place to call your own...that’s the dream at this point. Just affording to move out of your mother’s house is the American dream,” Thomas said.
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