With changing trends, there are a plethora of options in Pakistan when it comes to choosing where to live. While it is fun and mostly easier to choose the kind of house you’d want to live in, the locality, the city and the civic amenities you would desire, one often tends to be at a crossroads when it comes to deciding between buying and renting. Hence, we take a look at the pros and cons of renting and buying from an expert real estate point of view to help aid those in distress.

For starters, renting ensures a much easier moving process. If you’re not settled into a permanent professional and personal life, it’s extremely easy for you to relocate as frequently as you want on a rental basis, without anything holding you back. However, buying is a much more permanent process for most people and requires you to make once-in-a-lifetime decision often. Secondly, rental property does not require any maintenance efforts or costs on your part. Mostly maintenance is covered by the landlord as per the rental contract and relieves you from all such stresses. On the other hand, the maintenance of the property you own is obviously your responsibility and can be quite a headache.

Moreover, buying a property entails massive depreciation costs. Even though the Pakistani real estate market is going strong and property prices are generally on the rise, being a property owner still puts you at risk of owning a depreciating asset. However, rental property liberates you from any concerns of depreciation, property taxes, insurance, installments and mortgage as well as the worry of owning an illiquid asset.

On the contrary, buying property can be a blessing in disguise and has countless benefits. Buying property incurs social and financial security for you and allows you to build equity. While buying property enables you to possess a strong, long-term investment asset, renting property deprives you of that privilege and only incurs ever-increasing rent and the tension of paying up every month regardless of your financial constraints. Not only will selling your property a few years down the lane reap gigantic returns for you, subletting property you own earns you a free-flow of constant income. After all, who wouldn’t want to be the landlord rather than being the tenant?

In a customer survey recently conducted by Lamudi, safety and security emerged as the key drivers for property seekers when making decisions about whether to buy or rent. Among buyers, more than 70 percent said they chose to buy property because they wanted the security of owning their own home.

Since buying a commercial or residential property is a permanent move for most people, it allows you to become knit into the social fabric and a permanent member of communal living, allowing you to build a social life for yourself the way you want. Whereas renting property mostly entails house-hopping and a nomadic lifestyle for most people, which results in a reduction in the chances to become a permanent part of a social circle.

Lastly, buying property comes with the freedom to adorn and embellish your home, office or retail space the way you want, whereas rental property comes with numerous restrictions in terms of customizing your personal space.

Hence, buying vs renting is a difficult choice that needs to be carried out keeping in mind all financial, social, short-term and long-term pros and cons.