"Expensive" house hack in BOS or just rent and invest elsewhere?

[Andrew G.]

We are moving to Boston (zip 02144) and have about $200K available for a down payment. Rent for an apartment that would meet our needs is $2-2.2K/mo. We will be in Boston for 3 years at least.

Painting in broad strokes, it seems like any house hack I can find in the area would not do much better than breaking even each month (assuming we don't live there).

Of course, when you factor in that we would be paying towards P&I rather than towards rent, the hack looks attractive.

Am I better off investing elsewhere and just paying rent in Boston? It adds up to $75K over 3 years which is hard to stomach but I have a suspicion that doing so might actually be the better decision.