Buying or leasing a house?

Whether you lease or buy a house will mainly be determined by the length of your stay. Leasing will give you more flexibility. Accommodation can be leased quickly and for a short period of time. Furthermore, leasing does not require a major capital investment and means less responsibility regarding maintenance. However, in the event of leasing you should take into account that (cheap) social housing is subject to an income limit and there are long waiting lists in the big cities for this kind of houses. An advantage of buying over leasing is that you may benefit from rising house prices when you sell the house.