Home Ownership Downside

Owning a home is financially beneficial only if you have enough income to both use the tax deductions and pay for the utilities, taxes, insurances, and maintenance. A large risk associated with property ownership is that it will decrease in value. Yes, I said de-crease. It happens. It happens all the time somewhere. During my married life we managed to purchase and lose money on three homes — two of them in Florida! All of the losses were related to one of us chasing jobs. We owned the first home too short a period of time to overcome the upkeep expenses and closing costs when we had to sell it. Ditto the second and add a slow housing market that year. The third home took us four years to get rid of and yielded a substantial loss due to it being in a rural area that had not recovered from a 20% drop in property values when the major employer folded its tents and crept out of town, along with the breadwinner’s job. Before you buy a house, think about all the events that could happen. How will you pay all the expenses (and the mortgage) if you lose your job? What will you do when the house needs a new roof, plumbing, slides off its foundation, cracks appear in the walls, termites invade, the paint peels, the furnace gives out? Who pays for all those now, where you rent?