Renting an Apartment and Buying a House in Florida

Which is it better to rent a house or an apartment? If so, how much?

When we arrived in 2018, we rented the apartment in Orlando, we've been there for two years. So in an apartment, if you rent shorter term, it can be more expensive. If you rent like 12 months or 14 months, it can be cheaper, but just play on how long you wanted to rent or if you're planning to buy a house so you can get a proximity when you finish your apartment, and then buy a house.

So comparing renting and buying a property, it's more beneficial to buy a house because you're not wasting your money, you're putting your money into like saving and later on, you will get it back. Plus, right now from last year alone, the the prices of properties increased by around 24%, and even rentals from last year, it increased about 38%.

From nowadays, you're lucky if you can rent an apartment (two bedroom apartment) for $1,700 that will be a good price. If you're thinking of buying a property, you have to build your credit score. Start building your credit score, keep checking, don't miss any payment on your credit cards or anything like that. Because that will be very bad for your credit history. So that's what you do you, build your credit score and then if you think that you're ready to buy a house, go and look around and check the places that you like. Check the schools if you have kids, and you can look into the niche, and you know refer to that - the rates of the schools. If you think you're ready, you have to get the assessed by by realtors. If you pass with the assessment, then that's the time for you to build your house or buy a new house or even slightly used house.

Absolutely. So I think general rule of thumb though, for all immigrants. To rent first until you ready, because immigrating can be one of the best, most rewarding exciting things you can ever do in your life, but also can be very stressful. The last thing that you want to do is to buy a house too quickly before you are ready. You want to make sure that you can feel comfortable financially.

We have a lot of shows on financial literacy on building your credit, we actually have a show on how to buy a house. So if you have not yet seen those shows on the Connetics USA Nursing Agency YouTube, please go ahead and watch those. I think general rule of thumb is always to make sure that you are really financially before you buy a house. There are a lot of advantages, as Bong said, but that's not something to rush into.

What apartment costs are in Orlando area? Are they pretty much the same from a rental perspective?

Well, from that time 2018 to now it has drastically increased the rentals. A lot of people just coming down to Florida nowadays. So prices of houses and rentals really shoot up. From my experience when we first moved here, you can rent a two bedroom apartment like 1,400 like around those times (2019, early 2020s.) But nowadays, a two bedroom apartment can like 1,800 here in some area.

So there is differences and this is important for people to understand as well. I live in California - the cost of living in California is much, much higher. The taxes are much more in California than for example in Florida, but even within Florida you're gonna have differences.

Some parts of Florida that are more expensive than others where rentals or houses will be more expensive so you can't even just generalize and say "Well, Florida is much cheaper than California" There are pockets of Florida that are more expensive than others.