Harry T

Home Ownership: The Ideal That Refuses to Die

While this is definitely true, people have been succumbed into believing that by owning a house they will live a richer more fulfilling life.

My own parents were immigrants that came to this country 20+ years ago and have worked hard at their jobs in order to purchase a home and are still making their payments on this home. In fact, the payments may not be finished on the home until past their retirement age, yet they strive to make their payments in order to buy a home.

This ideology has been passed down to me, and while I am a renter now, I do strive to own a home one day, whether it means that I will continue to make the payments for my parents when they can no longer generate income and take over the home or go out and purchase a home of my own one day. Because isn't that what the selling point is? To be a homeowner means you can do to your home what you cannot do to another person's home. You can feel safe and comforting knowing that the landlord will not decide to sell the house one day, and also know that if you're not renting from an apartment you won't be subject to random inspections for "quality control".

I don't think that the fundamentals of home ownership are flawed. But the whole concept of lending money to people who cannot afford a home or cannot afford the home they wish to purchase is flawed. Many families are probably able to purchase a home, but a home cannot be a vehicle of investment, it isn't an ATM that can be used on a whim, and a home doesn't have future value until it is sold. So while there was a sellers market the past decade, it had to have been made clear a very important fact that a product whether it is a home, a car, a laptop, or canned tuna is only worth the price that someone else will pay for it. In those terms buying a home as an investment make absolutely no sense.

But there are those homeowners out there who wanted to buy a home and pay off the mortgage and live there, thing is some people got too euphoric about the kind of home they could buy when the money was flowing and bought up or out of their pay grade.