Renting vs. Buying Calculator

My friend found this buying vs. renting calculator for me from NY Times. It was pretty interesting as I was testing out different scenarios (as in buying a big house or a condo...). Based on the calculation, under my current situation, buying is better than renting after 21 years.

Perhaps there's really no rush to fulfill this part of my American Dream...

Consolation Freebies

I was reading the news yesterday and the foreclosure rate in my city skyrocketed. Hm...not that surprising. Since we all know how the Big Three are doing lately.

A few days ago, I received a real estates junk letter. There were two pictures that caught my eyes. The first one, featuring a home for sale, has a banner across the picture of the home. And the message is "Buy this home and get a free ipod nano." And the other one is "Buy this home and get a $300 Home Depot gift certificate."

Probably the real estates agent needs to put in more efforts in market research. If I'm going to buy a house today, I think I can also afford an ipod. Besides, an 8GB ipod nano is $249 and the national median existing home price in the mid-west is about $178,000. So the freebies is only 0.14% of the value of the house. I know it does take some creativity to get people to buy a house around the market price (especially in my area) right now. However, does giving away an ipod really attract a home buyer?