Yea once you get to a point in life your income is pretty much fixed you really have to be careful. What has really hit home is how many of the seniors I see that did not leave enough for retirement and even if they do own their home just the maintenance and taxes are killing them. I am seeing people basically living in dangerous dumps they can not even make livable. And I have heard more than one Ultra Senior say they have medication they purposefully keep on hand so if push comes to shove they have their own exit strategy. One said he actually wondered if the new program to mail three months worth of medication at a discount was actually to make "lethal" doses available. Since the desirable property where we live is heavily populated by Ultra Seniors there have been several conversations about how we are going to be crowded out one way or another. Quietly the protected status of Seniors only communities is being chipped away.

Always buy the super largest house you can find a short bike-ride from a University. Co-sign for friends so they will co-sign for you, so you can get into the market and buy the biggest house.
Divide the house into many rental units and watch the money roll-in. What ever your age, you will enjoy being a "home-owner landlord". If you are younger/have children/ or older you will notice all the great benefits (to many to list)
Be a happy home-owner landlord

OH WoW ! That is soooo scary. Why live in "hell"??? Rent the extra space, bedrooms, basement and so forth. Rent to some "young kids" and let them bring joy into the house. They will paint and fix things share the cost of internet, cable and add nice security to the house. Most young renters move after a year (= or -) so as landlord, you get to meet lots of nice people and have a happy life

More folks have made money in real estate than any other investment.
Broker Associate in real estate 40 years.
I owned 3 investment houses plus my own house. Years ago I re-financed, went from 20 & 30 year mortgages to 15 years. Increased my payments by $ 175.00 and put $ 43,000 in y pocket - TAX FREE.
Char

I have always preferred to "own" than Rent or lease. It is a personal choice for me.
One big reason is I dont' want to pay off someone else home and have nothing to show for it.

I also enjoy doing my home repairs and improvements. I like having that feeling after a long day landscaping the sense of pride over sore muscles etc.

So for me I will always prefer to Own...

Home ownership is awesome!
Especially, when there's no HOA to answer to.

owns my own home

Owning over renting....no brain-er......own...too many reasons to list...

For me, yes it is. If you have your own home, no need to think of monthly rental and no need to think of more rules. You can do whatever you want. It's an investment too.

Own. It's great to pay rent to uncle Sam every year. Geez no brainer

none of you lovely folks own anything. Try not paying your taxes and see how long you "own" it.

Selam

Exactly my point. Just waiting for someone to pick up on that.

Lol agreed.!

how about those tiny homes ...that are movable ... but you have to have a truck to pull it where ever you need to put it for a time ...

I would say up to the individual person ... to buy or rent and as some have said they can't afford to buy ... and they have said its better to buy if you can ... so many factors have to go into that of course ... with why you buy or what you buy ...

Since no one has brought this up, I figured I would. There's actually a legal way to obtain free property called adverse possession. Here's a link for information about it: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/adverse+possession


If a lot more people knew about this, and performed the proper channels for it, the housing industry would collapse again once and for all for all of the right reasons. Unfortunately, quite a few people who do this don't educate themselves on the how to go through the proper channels, and rightfully-so get evicted and arrested. As long as you educate yourself, then you won't get evicted or arrested for doing this.

For those of you who have taken psychology classes like I have, you should know about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (which is a pyramid of human rights), and shelter being one of the needs.

Stealing would be a better Term for that!

It's not stealing when no one owns the property. Obviously you wouldn't want to go through with this when someone already lives in a property you're looking at, because then you're invading on their territory. It's also not stealing when something like shelter was never supposed to have a price on it in the first place. The ONLY thing that's even REMOTELY illegal about it is having to break and enter in order to move in, but even with that, all you need is a lock picking kit. There's absolutely no need to create damage to the property just to get into it. Also, as long as you maintain and improve the property, respect your neighbors, and go through all of the other parts of the procedure the right way, then you have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting evicted or arrested.

Correct me if I'm wrong, did you even read the link I posted? I don't think you did.