Rent or Buy?

Sweeney has taken his winnings and invested in stocks and money market funds. Long term, he expects annual returns of 8 percent, or almost $1,000 a month, although he said he is doing better than that at the moment. He is now paying $2,000 a month for a two-bedroom, two-bath rental unit in the District, where he enjoys walking to places.

Martin, on the other hand, said the $160 extra she is paying every month is well worth it. Her townhouse has 600 square feet more of living space than her apartment did, as well as a patio, outdoor deck and small back yard. She has taken up gardening.

For both, calculations went beyond the purely financial. Renting, Sweeney said, has its pluses, such as not having to worry about fixing a broken appliance himself.

For Martin, owning her own place has brought numerous benefits -- for one, the freedom to decorate as she chooses.

"I don't have to have white walls. You can paint everything," she said. "Every day I go home, I think: 'Oh, all this is mine. I can walk freely, decide what I want to change next.' "

Martin now attends homeowners meetings to learn what is going on in her neighborhood and find out when local government meetings are scheduled. "You start to care because you are part of the community," she said.

It was the intangible that led Cheryl Skrzat, 28, to decide to plunge into homeownership.

She and her boyfriend, Justin Anderson, are both renting now -- she in a District apartment building, he in an Arlington house. They pay a combined rent of about $1,700 a month. The couple had discussed getting married and eventually buying a house, but urgent real estate choices had to be made when Anderson received a notice in March to vacate the house. It had been sold to a developer who wanted to tear it down.

Over the next week, the two discussed how they felt about living together before marriage and how they would handle lifestyle changes that would come with becoming homeowners, said Skrzat, who reached out to home-owning friends for advice.

"My biggest question was whether it was a nice feeling or if it was a big pain in the neck," said Skrzat, an editor for a daily health-care publication. Her friends told her it was worth it. "That resonated with me." So now they're looking seriously for a three-bedroom house in Fairfax County.

For Anderson, 29, a technology consultant, buying a house meant building equity, taking advantage of tax breaks and achieving "the whole American dream" of homeownership. Besides, he said, "I had just gotten kicked out of my house and I kind of wanted a little more stability than that."

Because of the slowing market, the couple decided they want a place they could stay in for up to 10 years even if it means their mortgage payment would be double what they are paying in rent. That way, they figured, even if the value of the home dipped a little, it should come back up in time for them to sell.

Skrzat said she had a wave of panic after meeting with the loan officer. Would they be house-poor as newlyweds? Would there be any money left over for vacations?

But in the end, Skrzat said, they wanted to start their lives together in a new place that they could call their own.

"It felt right for us," she said.