Rapidly rising rents could push some aspiring homeowners to pull the trigger on buying a home, despite higher mortgage rates and inflated house prices, experts say. Many home buyers had been priced out of the housing market as the widespread boom triggered a 27.8 per cent rise in median dwelling values nationwide since the pandemic. But renting has also become unaffordable, and in many cases even more so than buying. In more than one in four markets across the capital cities, paying a mortgage on an average home is cheaper compared with paying rent, analysis by CoreLogic shows. A total of 274 suburbs are more favourable for buyers than renters, including 201 unit markets and 73 house markets. Across 20 unit markets and one house market in Sydney, buying is cheaper than renting; in Melbourne, 20 apartment markets favour buyers more than renters. In western Sydney, buyers of median-priced units in Auburn are better off by $318 each month compared with renting, and they are ahead by $266 in Rosehill and by $254 in Mays Hill. It is cheaper to pay a mortgage than rent in Sydney’s inner suburbs Roseberry and Mascot, where buyers can save $203 and $190 on average each month, respectively. The monthly mortgage repayments for units in Melbourne’s inner-city suburbs Carlton and Docklands are cheaper than renting by $533 and $422, respectively. In Perth, buyers in Wembley and West Leederville are better off by $797 and $785, respectively. Darwin is the most favourable market for buyers – the monthly mortgage repayments