Housing

This course is a part of Personal finance, a 9-course Topic series from Khan Academy.

Where you choose to live is both a personal and a financial decision. Should you rent or buy? How does your credit score impact your interest rate for a loan? And what exactly is escrow? Explore these topics to make an informed financial decision about the place you call home.

This course contains 4 segments:

Renting vs. buying a home

Is it always better to buy than rent? What if home prices go up dramatically and rents don't? How can we compare home prices to rents to figure out what to do. This older tutorial (low-res, bad handwriting) walks us through this. It is about housing but similar thinking can be applied to any rent-vs-buy decision (spoiler alert, Sal did eventually buy a home).

Mortgages

Most people buying a home need a mortgage to do so. This tutorial explains what a mortgage is and then actually does some math to figure out what your payments are (the last video is quite mathy so consider it optional).

Home buying process

Buying a home involves a lot more than writing a check and getting keys. It could very well be the largest transaction that either the buyer or seller does in their life. Because of that, it is an involved process that can sometimes be confusing. Whether we're talking title insurance, escrow, or contingencies, the goal of this tutorial is to demystify the process.

Home equity and personal balance sheets

This old and badly drawn tutorial covers a topic essential to anyone planning to not live in the woods -- your personal balance sheet. Since homes are usually the biggest part of these personal balance sheets, we cover that too.