Renter thinks renting is better than Buying....We Say No Way!

Question: In this poor housing market, why are people still buying homes? I am renting in an apartment complex and I don't have to worry about any real estate mess.

Answer:  Although real estate moves in cycles, sometimes up, sometimes down, over the years, real estate prices have consistently appreciated. There are bad cycles in every investment. Nothing is great ALL the time. 

One of the greatest benefits of owning your own home is the freedom it can give you. If you live in an apartment, you have to deal with thin walls and noisy neighbors, and the task of keeping your own household relatively noise free. Your landlord may come and go, and there are many rules that limit everything from whether you can have pets to the color of your walls. If you own your home, you can do whatever you want with it. You can hang pictures or paint the walls as you please.

Owning a home provides more control over the children than in an apartment complex. In a neighborhood, kids usually play in the yards or go to friend's house a few doors away. My clients have told me that in an apartment complex they never knew where the kids were. They could be in any of dozens of apartments, doing who knows what. In a house you get to know the neighbors and watch out for each other's kids.

When you first purchase your home, your down payment is your only stake, as you pay down your mortgage, you own more of what may be an increasingly valuable property. This is called equity. Unlike renting where your rent can go up yearly, fixed mortgage payments will stay the same even as the market fluctuates.

Since the days of our country's Founding Fathers, pride of ownership has been a reflection of the value Americans place on freedom and self-reliance. Ensuring the growth of homeownership has always been a major objective of American national policy, dating back to the Homestead Act signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, which provided ways for settlers to claim public property as their own.  We are happy that you are content in your apartment, but homeownership continues to be the American Dream.