Preaching to the choir here. My area, there is nothing decent to rent. Anything is decent, and its about a normal mortgage payment. I totally agree with the sentiment of its yours, if you want to paint the walls pink, and put in a outside bar because you're bored, you don't need to ask your slumlord if its ok. And even the historically lower costing areas have in the past 30 years gone 3 to 4 times what they used to cost. My own shitbox, in the early 90s should have been about $50k. I bought it at the height of the realestate bubble in 2007 because i had to buy.