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전에도 몇번 올린적 있는 patrick.net 을 다시 올립니다. 첨보시는분 읽어 보세요 재미 있습니다. (물론 과장된 내용도 있습니다.)

http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html#links

"There are great tax advantages to owning."
FALSE. The tax advantage is not significant compared to the large monthly loss from owning. For example, it is far cheaper to rent in the San Francisco Bay Area than it is to own that same house, even with the deductibility of mortgage interest figured in. It is possible to rent a good house for $1800/month. That same house would cost about $700,000. Assume 6% interest, and we can see that a buyer loses at least $4,936 per month by buying. Renting is a loss of course, but buying is a much bigger loss.
Renting:
Rent: $1,800
----------------------
Monthly Loss: $1,800

Buying:
Property Tax: $486 ($729 per month at 1.25% before deduction, $486 lost after deduction.)
Interest: $2,333 ($3500 per month at 6% before deduction, $2333 lost after deduction.)
Other Costs: $450 (Insurance, maintenance, long commute, etc.)
Principal loss: $1,667 (Modest 3% yearly loss on $700,000. Reality will be much worse.)
----------------------
Monthly Loss: $4,936

This is a very conservative estimate of the loss from owning per month. If you include a realistic decline in house prices, as in this rent-vs-own calculator, you'll see that owning right now is a very poor choice. Here's a more optimistic calculator which ignores price changes entirely. House value losses will stop eventually, but it could take 5 or 10 years to bottom out.

Many people believe you can just reduce your income tax by the amount you pay in interest, but that's not true. Buyers do not deduct interest from income tax; they deduct interest from taxable income. Interest is paid in real pre-tax dollars that buyers suffered to earn. That money is really entirely gone, even if the buyer didn't pay income tax on those dollars before spending them on mortgage interest. You don't get rich spending a dollar to save 30 cents!

Of course the creeping AMT will eliminate the mortgage interest deduction soon anyway. Ah, you didn't know that there are limits to the mortgage interest deduction and that more and more people are hitting that limit every year?

Buyers do not get interest back at tax time. If a buyer gets an income tax refund, that's just because he overpaid his taxes, giving the government an interest-free loan. The rest of us are grateful.

If your mortgage interest is 6%, and you are in the 25% tax bracket, your loan is essentially at 4.5%.

If you don't own a house but want to live in one, your choice is to rent a house or rent money to buy a house. To rent money is to take out a loan. A mortgage is a money-rental agreement. House renters take no risk at all, but money-renting owners take on the huge risk of falling house prices, as well as all the costs of repairs, insurance, property taxes, etc. Since you can rent a house for 2% of its price, but have to pay 6% to borrow the equivalent amount of money, it is much cheaper to rent the house than to rent the money.

Then there's earthquake insurance. It's really expensive, so most people just skip it and risk everything on the chance that no earthquake will happen.