SYDNEY — Yep, you heard that right. Rent money is not dead money. It's time to leave the suburbs and surrender the long-held Australia dream of owning a home.

The greatest pub argument of the last decade — to buy or to rent — has been resolved.

Forget buying, you are officially better off renting. You can pay crazy rents for the next twenty years and no one can say a thing. Hello, coastal living.

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Don't believe it?

The Reserve Bank of Australia set the record straight in a new paper released Monday:

“If house price growth were to be slower than the historical average, as some forecasters predict, then the average home buyer would be financially better off renting,” the paper said.

The report titled Is Housing Overvalued? looked at whether it is more expensive to own a house or rent in Australia by assessing the costs involved with buying that do not exist with renting, such as the purchase price, interest rates, repairs and council rates.

Using a new dataset including prices and rents for matched properties, the paper found if house prices continued to grow at the same average rate of the past six decades, buying a home in the current market would be as costly as renting a property.

It analysed the difference between the relative costs of owning and renting by adding up the discounted costs of each "over the period for which a house is expected to be owned."

The paper said owning a home was often the more attractive option over a longer term but that the "size of the effect was not obvious".

"Buying is less expensive than renting for anyone expecting to stay in their house for more than eight years," the paper said.

“Consistent with conventional wisdom, households expecting to move again in a few years’ time are better off renting, unless they believe they can sell the property for an unusually large capital gain.”