Here in Greater Boston, renters, not buyers, still have the numbers on their side
It is now cheaper to buy a house than rent an apartment in 74 percent of the nation's largest metro markets, Trulia's latest Rent vs. Buy Index finds.
That is just about everywhere else except for Greater Boston, which is one of the few holdouts in this trend towards dramatically cheaper homes.
OK, it's hardly a surprise that Las Vegas, the original foreclosure basket case, tops the list of markets where it's far cheaper to buy than rent.
The same goes for Detroit, where you could probably pick up a home for practically nothing if you are willing to take your chances on the sputtering Motor City.
But there are also a lot of fairly attractive metro markets where buying a home now makes more sense than renting.
It's a group that includes Baltimore and Charlotte, Atlanta and Minneapolis, Chicago and Sacramento.
Yet while home prices have plunged around the country, the decline in the Boston area has been far more tentative.
While New York tops the markets where it still makes more sense to rent - and frankly it always has and always will - Boston is not far off that mark.
In fact, we fall into a special category, where it still largely makes more sense to rent, with a few exceptions based on your tax category.
Boston scores an 18 on Trulia's Rent vs. Buy Index, just below the 21 that would put it fully in the handful of top renter cities.
Here's another way to look at it. You could buy the average house in Sacramento for the amount you would shell out to rent a two bedroom apartment over the next eight years.
But in Boston, it would take you nearly two decades of rental payments - or 18 years - before you spent an amount equivalent to the average listing price.
That's a big difference, though that dynamic may start to shift here in Boston, and not because of any dramatic downshift in prices ahead.
Rather, rents are now soaring amid rising demand. And that may eventually make buying a more attractive option, even if home prices continue to be sticky on the way down..
