Don't rent. Buy.

Don't enrich your landlord. Enrich yourself.

@2 Good advice if you can afford it

So? people make bad financial decisions all the time.

The cost of "owning" a home is much more than the mortgage note each month--there's all the upkeep that is now your responsibility and not the landlord's. The recent crazy Seattle housing market and collapse of mortgage loan rates has created a situation where if you bought a while back and have refinanced, you can be paying substantially less than the average rent, but that's not a sustainable model.

Cities have always been places where people come together to trade goods and services and and generate wealth. They are not objectively the best places to live. It is just that most of us find it easiest to make money in the centers and have to do it most days. The post war highway building allowed people to easily get into the centers of cities for their work and get out quickly, thus the rise of the suburbs, 'white flight', 'urban decay', and lower inner city real estate values. This era is over as neither the expansion of our transportation systems nor the construction of new housing is keeping up with population growth. Until these two problems are addressed, housing in the centers of the cities will become more and more privileged and go to those who were here first, those who have the financial ability pay, or some other government imposed privilege criteria (ie rent control). Or, I suppose if something made the City less desirable to live in and stemmed the flow of new immigrants.

@4 That might be true sometimes but you're also building equity in something you can sell for a profit. When you rent in Seattle you're probably just enriching some Hong Kong mafia triad who've never even been to the Seattle properties they suck the pennies from. See Vancouver.

Nearly half of Seattle renters also live alone.

@7 I know. If only we took up the Soviet lifestyle of several people living together in a small one bedroom apartment we can all enjoy the good the collective has to offer.

Most people I know pay closer to 50%

I lived in shared housing most of my adult life here. Between 1 and 4 housemates. I hardly knew anyone who lived by themselves. It is possible to have a good life, if you are realistic about it.