Today I have decided to tell you some of my thoughts on the eternal question - rent or mortgage. As you know, the Bulgarian national psychology is to own the home they live in, we, together with the Romanians, are the first in home ownership, unlike the Western countries. For example, in Bulgaria 95% of people live in their own home, whereas in Germany and the USA this percentage is around 74. This is because of the psyche of Bulgarians, who like to work where they live, while Westerners like to live where they work.
The biggest advantage of a mortgage is , that it has an end, and on that end you become the owner of the home, that is you have something that you will leave to the children or rent it out, but eventually you gain ownership, whereas with renting this cannot happen. There you pay, you pay, you pay and eventually somebody comes along and ... it stays for them. The biggest downside of a mortgage is that all the costs associated with the property are on you - taxes, repairs, leaks from neighbours, replacement of furnishings, whereas with a lease these things can quite easily be negotiated with the landlord, for example small repairs and refreshments and be dropped from the rent.
Renting is ideal for young families who haven't yet established whether they will be able to live together, whether they will be able to get along, while a mortgage is more for people who already know they are "going to spend the rest of their lives together". However, it should be borne in mind that the term of a mortgage is long - usually 20 to 30 years, there will inevitably be crises in such a term, there will be months and years when it will be harder to pay the mortgage, and there may even be times, where you won't be able to pay your mortgage at all, and when that happens real estate has traditionally been a slowly liquid asset and just when a person needs money everyone else decides no, they're not going to buy and prices hit bottom, you lose money and it becomes ... problem. Whereas with rent you pay, the moment it becomes a problem you go to a smaller apartment, or you go back to your parents and don't pay rent, it's much more mobile.
There are people, especially right now - freelancers, freelancers who work online from home, for them renting is much better. For them, today they live in Plovdiv, work from home, pay rent, tomorrow they decide to go to live in Sofia, work online from home again, in 3 months - Kuala Lumpur, pay rent there and work online from home again. A mortgage is an important decision, linked to a clear plan for the future and its repayment, so it's good to think about it from all sides, and not to make it hastily based on ideas like - they give cheap loans now, let's get one, then we'll think how to pay it back.
