<prompt> Human: So I want to move closer to work and the two options I had in mind are either buying a townhouse or renting an apartment. Ive done the math and the monthly cost for renting and for owning a townhouse range anywhere from 800-1000 a month in the area Im looking for for similar units. i.e. garage, 2 bedroom 1 and 12 bathrooms, kitchendining room. Essentially the apartments Im looking at are townhouses that are for rent. I was wondering if renting for a couple of years 1-2 then looking for more permanent location would be better then just going straight for owning a house so instead of spending roughly 20,000 in renting for those two years have that go towards a townhouse payment. My concern is how hard it will be to re-sell the townhouse when I am ready to move out. Do townhouses lack value growth i.e. if I was to buy a 70,000 dollar townhouse will it depreciate to 60,000 when Im ready to sell?In short, which would be the better option and is there anything I could have overlooked with calculating out the pricing?EDIT: Thank you all for your input. Ive decided to rent until I feel like it would be worthwhile to purchase a house i.e. having a family or I feel like I will be in the area for awhile.  <response>: Rent and put half of the rent away as savings, every month. I mix it into savings and a few no load mutual funds or CDs to be safer, about 3367Your TCO on the house will be approximately that. 1.5x rent Youll have to pay more maintenance costs save for maintenance costs as well as more expensive insurance, property taxes, etc.So get used to paying more. 2 years from now you could have 12-13k rather than it COSTING you 4k to sell the house and any other charges youll need like paint, carpet cleaning, etc etc... You probably wont make back the equity you gain over that short period of time in a townhouse that cheap.But lets say you hang around 4 years, now youve got like 25-26k in savings, and that sounds like a decent down payment start for the house you actually want to buy, and you can decide if you have been good with the 1.5x rent monthly cost subtracting from the rest of your discretionary spending.If you get 6 months in saving like this and hate life for not being able to do anything since you have no money, you just got yourself pretend housepoor and know that it would have been a big mistake to buy.So its like a preview. 