Is Buying a House in the US Worth It on H-1B? Here Is Why I Am Still Renting

And here is the part nobody talks about: even if your house price does double, you are probably not going to sell it. Because if your house went up, so did every other house around you. You still need somewhere to live, and that place will cost just as much. So the gain exists only on paper. You cannot spend it, you cannot move it, and you cannot do anything with it until you sell, which most people never do. As I wrote in my post on the money traps that keep Indian professionals from financial freedom, putting everything into one illiquid asset is one of the most common and most painful mistakes immigrants make.

That Feeling of Owning a Home Is Not the Same as Actually Owning It

There is a feeling you get when you move into a house. It feels like yours. You paint the walls, you set up the furniture, you call it home. And emotionally, that feeling is real. But financially, until you have paid off that loan, the bank owns it. Miss a few mortgage payments and you will find out very quickly who the real owner is.

On a $1.2M home at 6.5% interest with 20% down, for roughly the first 5 to 8 years, the amount going to interest and the amount going to principal are almost equal. You are paying a significant portion of the house cost in interest alone during that window, and the equity you are actually building is much smaller than most people assume. That mental comfort of “I own my home” can be dangerous if it makes you stop thinking clearly about where your money is actually going.

And let us not even get into property tax, HOA fees, annual maintenance, the roof that needs replacing every so often, the appliances, the landscaping. There is always something. Below is a line I read somewhere which I really love:

On H1B, a 60-Day Clock Changes the Entire Calculation

This is the part of the conversation that rarely comes up in these meetups, because most people do not want to think about it. I am on an H1B visa. If I lose my job tomorrow, I have 60 days to find a new employer sponsor or fall out of status. Visa policy has shifted unpredictably over the past several years, and there is no guarantee it will not shift again. I wrote about this in detail in my post on why financial freedom is non-negotiable on H1B, and the house question sits right at the center of it.

Yes, the average Bay Area home sells in under 30 days in a strong market. But what if the market is soft when you need to sell? What if rates are high and buyers are scarce? You could be forced to unload a $1.2M asset at a loss, under time pressure, during the most stressful period of your professional life. And here is the part that stays with me: if you have to leave, you might not even know if you will be able to come back. Selling a house from abroad, in a market you can no longer read, is not a clean exit.

A liquid portfolio is different. You can log into your brokerage account from anywhere in the world, see exactly what you have, and transfer it back when the time is right, whether that is 1 year later or 3. The same applies to your retirement accounts. I wrote about how to think about your 401k if you ever return to India in my post on investing in a 401k on an H1B visa. The point is the same: liquid assets give you options. A house in the Bay Area does not. Unless you have a clear plan to stay in the same area for at least 5 to 7 years, the math on buying rarely works in your favor.

A Mortgage Far from Work Is Not a Home. It Is a Commute.

I have seen people buy houses that are 1.5 to 2 hours away from their workplace because that was what they could afford. And I have never once heard anyone say they loved it. Spending 1.5 to 2 hours each way in traffic every day means you are trading time with your family for a commute. That is a choice only you can make, but I know which side of that trade I am on.

The flexibility angle matters for your career too. Bay Area tech layoffs have been real and sustained. When you start a job search, you need to be able to move. A renter in San Jose can sign a new lease near a job in San Francisco or take a role in Seattle without a second thought. A person with a mortgage in Sunnyvale cannot do that cleanly. As I wrote in my post on what working 40 hours taught me about savings and sanity, protecting your time and your optionality is not a soft benefit. It is a financial strategy.

The Decision That Got Easier Because We Did Not Have a Mortgage

After our child was born last year, my wife and I talked about whether one of us should take a break. She wanted to, but she was hesitant. Living in the Bay Area, she knew how expensive everything is, and her first question was, “Would we be able to do it?” We sat down, looked at our situation, and it was honestly a no-brainer. She took the time off. She is home with our baby right now, and she keeps telling me it is one of the best decisions of her life.

If we had been sitting on a $1.2M mortgage, that conversation would have looked completely different. She might still be working a job she needed a break from, because the monthly number would have demanded it. Financially, two incomes would have been the smarter short-term call. But the whole reason I think about money the way I do, as I described in my money philosophy as a global Indian, is that financial freedom means being able to make the decisions that matter most without your debt making them for you.

If I Ever Buy, Here Is the Only Way I Would Do It

I am not against buying a house forever. But if I ever do, I would not go all in the moment I scraped together a 20% down payment. On a $1M home, $200,000 down leaves me right at the edge of my mortgage with no cushion. That is not ownership. That is financial anxiety with a new address.

There is also a portfolio allocation question that nobody talks about. If my only savings is the equity in my house, and I am putting every extra dollar toward the mortgage, then 100% of my net worth is sitting in a single illiquid asset. That is not an investment strategy. In a balanced portfolio, real estate or home equity should be one allocation, maybe 20% to 30% of your total net worth, not the whole thing. The rest should still be in index funds, retirement accounts, and liquid savings that you can actually use.

My personal threshold would be having 50% to 60% of the home’s value in liquid assets before putting 20% down. On a $1M home, that means $500,000 to $600,000 in savings before I even consider signing. After the down payment, I still have $300,000 to $400,000 in reserve. That buffer means I can keep making mortgage payments for 3 to 5 years even if everything goes sideways at once. That is the version of homeownership that gives me peace of mind. Anything less just gives me a deed and a lot of stress.

Know your finances before you know your zip code. Do not buy because the room expects it. Buy when your numbers, your visa runway, and your life plan are all pointing in the same direction at the same time.

Are you weighing the rent vs. buy decision right now? Drop your situation in the comments below. The deeper financial comparison between renting and buying is a conversation for another post, but I would love to hear where you are in the decision.