By Chris Swanson, Broker/Owner
The real estate industry has always had advocates throwing around numbers and stats about how great it is to own your own home. At the same time there are always naysayers who say that for whatever reason, it’s not the best thing to do. Although some people have certainly gotten themselves in trouble, the vast majority of homeowners benefit greatly and it’s so cool to see this first hand.
We had a family buy a condo a few years ago. They bought VA so needed no money down, yet the really neat thing was, that while they were paying $2300/mo. in rent, their new house payments turned out to be just under $2,000, which included taxes, insurance and homeowners fees. As is, this is really a great story but it gets better. The property they bought in July of 2011 was appraised at $250,000., we are currently helping them again with a refinance to a lower interest rate; the appraisal which coincidently, was done by the very same appraiser who did the original appraisal, just came in at $400,000.!
So here we have the same property, in the same condition, appraised by the same appraiser, showing $150,000 appreciation in 3 ½ years. This family has improved their personal balance sheet by over $40,000 per year while paying $300 less than what they were paying in rent! Not to mention, income tax savings, pride of ownership and principal loan reduction with every payment… sounds like a good investment to me, but now I’m starting to sound just like one of those real estate advocates.
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