The Owning v. Renting Debate a Year Later

A long-time reader reminded me the other day that it was just about a year ago that we had two posts and over 200 comments on the issue of owning versus renting.

my memory keeps remembering and reviewing those conversations on your blog where all those Santa Barbara real estate maniacs kept on pushing the wisdom of buying all those houses and leveraging money for the obvious utopia that would follow...Do you ever think about that? I wonder what they would say now?

I was reading how people in Riverside are abandoning their homes and clean up crews are finding expensive items and even left-behind passports and birth certificates in the aftermath. My, things have changed....

No, I don't think that will happen here...but if the renter advocates had been saving their money and getting out of debt, aren't they in a great position to buy today? Prices in Santa Barbara have been down by upwards of 35%, no? When homes can be $100,000 less than they were in December of 2007 -- why not buy?