WASHINGTON

Real estate agents Across the country are aggressively making The Case That Now is a good time to buy a house. Mortgage Rates are near record lows and Will Probably Rise in Coming Years. Home Prices May Not Be Done falling, goal THEY Probably Do not Have Much Further To Go in MOST places Eith. Rents are The Other Hand, Seema Set to Increase, thanks to low vacancy rates.

"Renters beware," a newsletter Warned That I Recently Received from a real estate agents&&9; group.

Individually, EACH IS unobjectionable points of contention. But It&&9;s important to remember the Source. Real estate agents, mortgage brokers and like home builders, Have a big stake in financier Persuading people to buy homes. That&&9;s Why Many agents are Always pushing home buying, Whatever The rationale of the Moment Happens to Be.

The Truth Is That You Can make just as strong a case in Many places for renting.For starters, Neith mortgage ent normal rats are Likely to rise rapidly. Even more importantly, house price, relative to rent, Remain Higher Than Their long-term average, Especially in Much of California, the Pacific Northwest and the New York region. In These places, Among Others, renting IS Often Cheaper Than buying - still.

I&&9;ve made a near-annual habit in this column of Looking at the rent-versus-buy decision, and The Times has built year online calculator so readers That Can Make Their Own comparisons. The idea isn&&9;t only to help potential buyers to figure out whether to aussi WHERE and house price are overvalued. That Obvious question of importance to IS Homeowners and to the American economy.

As this year&&9;s spring buying season nears peak icts, The relationship deserves of renting and buying are Closer Than THEY Have Been Since The housing bubble inflating Began Almost a decade ago.So The Best single piece of advice for MOST people to make a decision IS Mainly based on Their course of life, Rather Than On Any financier complex calculations.

If you think you are ready to settle in one place for at least five Years, if not more, buying a lot of Often Makes sense. That&&9;s Why I bought my first house, in the Washington area, A FEW years ago, despite thinking Local Prices Remained High.

Purpose If The chances are good That You Will move again in The Next Few Years, renting Usually IS The Better bet. The Various closing costs: Including real estate agents&&9; fees, are just too high. Owning a house aussi Makes It Much Harder To move When you want to Because selling a house IS complicated.

Within this basic framework, the Numbers - specifically, Something Called rent ratios - Are the next place to turn. A rent ratio Is The Sale Price Of A House Divided by The Annual cost of renting equivalent year house.When The IS ratio below 15, most is people should "Lean Toward buying.

To See Why, look at the Atlanta area, Where the average ratio of about 13 Is Now. Combined With today&&9;s low interest rates, That ratio means clustering thats the typical monthly mortgage payment IS SEVERAL Hundred Dollars Lower Than The Rent one year equivalent house. Over time, this difference Help Make Up for The Other Costs of Owning, like closing Costs Costs and borrowing paperless payday loans. And, yes, to Mortgage Costs money, despite The tax deduction.

Only if Home Prices Fall Further in Atlanta and do not recover for buyers today MOST Years Would Have Reason for regret. The Other Areas Where the average ratio below 15 IS, According to Moody&&9;s Analytics, include Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Las Vegas, Cleveland, Detroit, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Tampa, Fla..

On The Other End Of The Spectrum are metropolitan areas "WHERE Prices Still look bubbly.In San Diego, The ratio WAS 22 at The End of last year (and MOST Ratios Have Fallen Slightly Since Then only). In northern and central New Jersey, It Was 25, It Was and 29 in Manhattan. In Silicon Valley & the nearby East Bay in California, The WAS ratio Above 30.

All These numbers are well down from Their peaks from about five years ago. Purpose They&&9;re Still Higher Than They Were in the Decades Before the housing bubble. They Are Also High Enough To Make The Monthly Costs of Owning steeper Than The Costs of renting.

As a rule of thumb, a ratio Roughly 20 Above Means That a monthly mortgage bill Than Is High rent for a similar house. In Silicon Valley, The After-tax mortgage payment was typical house Might Be $ 3.500 - The Rent while it Would Be The Same house only about $ 2,500.

The arithmetic of Owning Then gets mighty tough. On top of Costs and mortgage closing costs: owners are falling aussi Further behind renters EACH month.That to make up ground, house price to rise Would Have Significantly Over the Next Few Years. Does that sound like a good bet?

When you Look at the numbers this way, it&&9;s easy to Conclude That The Excesses Of The housing bubble are gone Mostly in Much of the Country. Yet you start wondering whether aussi New York, San Francisco, Seattle and A Few Other Places Still Have A Future In Their housing crash.

I Realize There Are Some important caveats here. Affluent people tend to want to own Their houses, Even When The dollars do not make sense, & the Northeast and West Coast are home to much more wealth Than A Few decades ago. That "could cause future rent ratios to Be Higher Than Those In The 1990s gold events the 1980s, a decade Better for real estate. Meanwhile, The Coming Rise in Rents - maybe 4 or 5 percent a year, for The Next Few Years - Will Reduce rent ratios Even If Prices Do not Fall.

The Fact Remains That yet a lot of New Yorkers and Californians, Among Others, are a hefty premium for Paying The Privilege of Owning. Eventually, Some of Them May decided it&&9;s not worth it, Much have Homebuyers in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Florida ultimately Decided That Were Too High Prices. If That Happens, prices in New York and California Will Fall, too.

A crash strikes me as Unlikely. Any Purpose Potential Homebuyers Should Know That real estate exuberance - irrational exuberance, It Seems - has at least Survived in a few "seats.

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com; twitter.com / DLeonhardt

Economic Scene: Rent or Buy, A Matter of Lifestyle