A related question is whether buying a home is rational at all, when compared to renting. Obviously it depends on how long you plan to live in the same place, but I've seen a lot of people buy and be tied down by houses even when in expectation they'd only be living in the same town for a few years. Can anyone point to a good discussion of the calculations involved here? (I imagine the end results will vary country by country - for example, by impression is that in parts of the UK, where I live, houses cost more relative to rent than in other places.)