The most important benefit to owning a house is the fact that you own it. It is yours and you can do anything you want with it.
You can paint the walls, put up pictures, change the carpet, and slam the doors. If you accidentally put a hole in the wall you can fix it yourself without having to worry about your landlord throwing a fit.
You are the landlord. You get the peace of mind knowing that it is all yours and you do not have to worry about this higher power that has control over the four walls you live within.
Most people do not choose to buy until they have a family to raise and need a long term place to call home. That is when the need arises to have a big place where you can spread out and put your thing in obscure places and forget about them for a few years.
With renting you usually have a one year lease that you sign, but when that lease is up, it is up to the discretion of your landlord whether or not they choose to rent the home out to your again or not. You may be able to rent a home twenty years, but you may only be able to for own.
The outcome is unknown, and you have little control over the situation. Your family may have to find a new place at any time with only a short amount of notice.
Because of this, buying your own home will give you some security. You will know that the property is yours and you have complete control over whether or not you move.
You also get the perk of getting to do whatever you want with the place. You can remodel, decorate, and put your own personal style in the home without having to think twice about it.
It may cost several hundred thousand dollars to buy, and you may be in debt for the majority, if not the rest of your life, but buying a home is rewarding opportunity that you should take advantage of if you get the chance. In some cases, however, it is not always the best option.
For example if your credit is not great, you may not even be able to purchase real estate, and if you can the interest rates will probably be astronomically high. If that is the case, it may be in your best interest financially to wait until your credit score improves and you can get lower interest rates.
In another instance, if you are only planning on living in an area for a short amount of time, like two years, it may not be the option to buy. You never know what is going to happen to the market, it may skyrocket or it may plummet.
It is really a game of chance, and you do not want to be tied down with a money pit if you know you have to leave the area. Say, for example, you take a job that only requires to you move to a city like Dallas for two years.
Two years seems like a long enough time to buy a house to settle in and be able to sell it for a modest profit with a minimal amount of cosmetic work. But in real estate time, two years is nothing and your investment will probably not change that drastically.
If you include the amount of money that goes into closing costs, insurance, and taxes after buying and selling, you will probably end up losing several thousand dollars. Instead, you should save yourself from paying property taxes, taxes for buying, taxes for selling, hiring a real estate agent to buy, a real estate agent to sell, dealing with closing costs, and the hassle of waiting.
Buying should be saved for long term investment that you want to settle into and ride the ups and downs of the market without wondering if you will be able to make a profit. That is, unless you are a flipper who buys and sells real estate for a living.
Jack R. Landry has worked in real estate since 1988 as an expert on home buying and construction. He has written hundreds of articles on real estate and recommends (http://www.alwaysaffordablehomes.com) for new construction.
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