I live in the DC area and I pay $1150 for my very spacious one bedroom apartment with a sunroom. I am also paying off my debt this month (yes, all of it! Yeah!) and hope that by this time next year I will be able to buy. But when I recently looked into it, I found that it would be much more expensive to buy then to rent.

First of all, I don't want to move so far out of DC that I have to do more then an hour of comute time. So the houses in the vicinity that I want to live in run from $250K up to $500K for something modest. At this time I may only be able to get a 3% downpayment together for the lower range which would be around $10K. With all the fees, closing costs and PMI that I would have to pay my monthly mortgage would be over $2K a month.

So you see, I would double my monthly expenses by buying something rather then continueing to rent. Plus if I moved into a home I would be responsible for all the repairs, appliances if they are not included, yard work and other maintenance, etc.

I am not saying it is a bad thing to own something rather then to rent and I do want to try to by something next year, it is just not necessarily cheaper.