is buying a domain better than making a new one?

I am looking to make a blog and I am still learning. I want to do everything the best way and I am not sure if making or buying a expired domain is better

Buying a clean Expired domain is Always better for SEO purpose.

If you can find a clean, same niche, already powered by strong links, or even brandable domain, thats awesome I think, but could u? I doubt it...

If you get it from a reputable seller (several here on BHW) and it's clean + has a existing profile, it's always better.

As everyone above said, a good expired domain with age and strong backlinks would set you up for a great start. Just wanted to add that besides checking stats, you should also make sure the domain hadn't been used for pharma or porn websites by looking at archive.org

Its hit or miss. I recently used 2 auctioned domains with similar quality for 2 websites that I ordered from the same guy (same quality, same number of articles, same keyword research). One of the websites already have hundreds of keywords in the index and traffic, the other .. zero - like 1 keyword in top 200. Both domains are clear, never dropped, never used for anything bad, and had previously about the same amount of traffic. Who knows why Google decided that one of them deserve rankings and the other note.

So if you decide to use expired domain - do not go all in. Upload some content and see if is getting somewhere. If not - move on.