Home ownership

The real estate market has changed to the extent that home ownership is not necessarily the best financial option. You may come out ahead by selling your home and renting either a house, apartment, or condo. This option frees all of your home equity for living expenses. 

To calculate a financial analysis of owning versus renting, add up all the costs associated with home ownership. This includes the direct costs of taxes, insurance, and maintenance, plus the opportunity cost of earnings on the capital tied up in the home. Then, compare this figure to what it would cost you to rent adequate housing. 

Home ownership is often more expensive (taxes, maintenance, etc.). 

Some retirees prefer to give up the responsibility and financial burden of home ownership. 

Home ownership can provide income years through a trade-down. For example, moving from a 400,000 house to a 200,000 house in retirement will allow you to have 200,000 of new investment money (which can support your entire shelter bill, including utilities, property insurance, and upkeep). The trade-down option is the single largest lever people have on their retirement security. It can replace 2 to 4 years of income. 

There is a tendency of Americans to buy by the lowest initial price, rather than the lowest price per unit of time. Passive solar heating and cooling raises the initial cost of a home, but lowers the cost of home ownership over a period of years. Outdoor paint that will last for 3 years will probably be cheaper than paint that will last for 5 years. However, it is not cheaper per unit of performance when the time, labor, and money involved in repainting every 3 years is considered. 

Does extent of home ownership among hourly employees indicate stability and community pride ... 

Workplace incidents cause an enormous amount of physical, financial and emotional hardship for individual workers and their families. Combined with insufficient workers compensation benefits and inadequate medical insurance, woikplace injuries and illnesses can not only cause physical pain and suffering but also loss of employment and wages, burdensome debt, inability to maintain a previous standard of living, loss of home ownership and even bankruptcy. When implemented effectively, injury and illness prevention programs can help workers and their families avoid these disruptive and sometimes calanutous impacts on their lives. 

The economy drives the mortgage markets, but governments also play a role. In many countries it has been long-term government policy to promote home ownership, usually through the tax system, and particularly targeting low income households. These schemes have generally been successful but the level of home ownership still varies considerably across Europe (see Exhibit 11.2). 

By the mid-1990s, the conditions were ripe for abuse as the modest disclosure requirements of the TILSAct proved unequal to the task of protecting consumers from highly motivated predatory lenders. Subprime loans set thousands of unsophisticated borrowers on a course of borrowing and refinancing that ultimately ended in foreclosure, humiliation, and bankruptcy. Congress partially addressed the problem with the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of... 

Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act, Pub. L. 103-525, 108 Stat. 2190 (1994) Renuart Keest, Tmth in Lending, 659-62 Ke)detz, HOEPA, 174,177-79 Mansfield, Subprime HEL, 542, 562-63. 

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