Advice on Buying or Renting a Home

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews several different Internet sites that purport to be non-biased sources of information concerning the pros and cons of renting or buying a home. The paper points out that the advice offered on these sites is often from a source that stands to gain from whatever position that they advocate, thus making the advice biased rather than unbiased. The paper also points out that some of the sites contain advertisements that contradict the advice offered on the site; this minimizes the credibility of the advice.

From the Paper:

"Deciding whether to buy a home or to rent one can be a very difficult subject. In everyday life, many people seem to have very strong prejudices about the subject. Especially among the younger generation, it seems that many people find renting to be very advantageous and preferable to buying. However, if one goes on-line to research this topic, it is very difficult to find reliable information which honestly weighs the pros and cons of renting and buying. Many pages claim to give an unbiased view of the situation, or even to favor renting over buying. For example, one page titled "Mortgages: When not to buy a house" (http://www.bankrate.com/brm/ news/mtg/19990805.asp) definitely looks as at first glance as if it supports renting over buying. However, on closer inspection one finds that the article has strong ties to the real estate industry. Another site, She Knows Home and Garden, (http://sheknows.com/about/look/2156.htm) includes an article titled "The benefits of buying a house". At first glance this article seems to be presenting an unbiased informative look at all the reasons why buying is better and feasible for every life situation -- if one reads the fine print this article is actually a summary or reprint from a HUD (Housing and Urban Development) pamphlet supporting home purchase. While it may be possible to find unbiased information on this subject online (for example, one can find sites aimed at "home economics" teachers which present relatively unbiased perspectives [Clow]), these are not presented in such a way that they are readily accessible to the common reader."

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