The debate has raged on in the blogosphere: is it better to rent? Or to own? I have been a silent observer, but have been involved in my own life.

My parents were renters until 1981, when they plunked down a then-unheard of $200,000 for a house on what was considered “the wrong side of Court Street” in what is today called Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. There was a schoolyard on our block with nothing in it but a handball court.  Besides that it was just a featureless expanse of asphalt.  I used to ride my bike around in circles in the lot and all the kids there lived in the Gowanus Houses—projects on Hoyt Street, two blocks away. Slowly but surely. the neighborhood gentrified and Smith Street (one block away) transformed from crack dens, nail salons and bodegas to French restaurants, designer clothing stores and Korean bodegas.  Today that house is worth almost ten times what my parents paid for it.

My folks got divorced when I entered college and my father (for a number of complicated reasons) decided to give everything—including the house—to my mother.  He borrowed from his pension fund to buy an apartment for $100,000, fought like hell with the co-op board, sold it for almost $300,000 two years later, and bought a house in Fort Greene for $400,000.  The house he bought was on the wrong side of DeKalb—in fact it was just off of Myrtle Avenue.  As dicey as my block was in the 80s, it was Mayberry compared to Myrtle, which we all called “Murder Avenue.”  Needless to say, the wave of gentrification splashed ashore there as well, and now my father’s house is worth about three times what he paid for it.

Which brings me to me.  After my wife and I decided to have kids, we moved into the duplex above my father in his building.  We don’t live rent free—my dad still has to pay his mortgage. Today, our apartment is comprised of me, my wife, our two kids, and her mother.  Things are getting cramped and we’d like to move.  Should we rent or should we buy?

My parents’ experience tells me that buying property in New York is a winning bet, and that things are going to keep getting better for years.  Increasingly many suburban kids are moving to New York to partake in the culture, while the suburbs are getting poorer and poorer. These kids gentrified me out of my mother’s neighborhood and now have just about gentrified my out of my father’s as well.  It’s hard not to want to stake a claim before it’s too late.  I sometimes feel like if we don’t buy now, we will be eventually consigned to the wilds of Staten Island or even… Teaneck.

On the other hand, I know that thinking like this is what led to the housing bust.  I also know that past success does not predict future outcomes.  I also remember a time in the early 90s (as well as much of the 80s) when New York seemed like it was getting worse and worse, not better and better.  Not to mention the fact that the mostly atrocious school system makes it very hard for middle class parents who are forced to plunk down five figures for a good private school or scam their way into a “gifted and talented” program if they don’t want their kids getting beat up every day at their zoned elementary school. Renting would allow me to hedge my bets. It would mean that I would not have to spend hours bent over a busted hot-water heater, wondering how to make it work, or force me to confront a possibly belligerent tenant or to worry about the kids hanging out on the block blasting that infernal “rap” music.

So what should I do?