1- Why buying a home is a good idea?
2- Stable Monthly Housing Costs and an investment
3- Forced Savings!
4- Freedom & Individualism!
5- Freedom of Space!

1- Why buying a home is a good idea? As a general rule, homes appreciate about four or five percent a year. The average return may fluctuate year to year and the percentage will vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, region to region.

Five percent may not seem like that much at first. Stocks, Treasury bills and Bonds could appreciate much more, and you could easily earn over the same return with some of these very safe investments. Wait, take a second look… Let’s suppose you bought a $200,000 house and you did not pay cash for the home. You have a mortgage, too. Suppose you put as much as twenty percent down – which would be an investment of $40,000.
With an appreciation rate of 5% annually, a $200,000 home would increase in value $10,000 during the first year. That means you earned $10,000 with an investment of $40,000. Your annual "return on investment" would be an exciting twenty-five percent.
Of course, you are making mortgage payments and paying property taxes, as well as other costs, however, over time your rate of return when buying a home is still likely to be higher than most any other investment available.

2- Stable Monthly Housing Costs and an investment! When you rent a home, you can certainly expect your rent to increase each year.
If you get a fixed rate mortgage when you buy a home, you have a stable monthly payment amount for the term of the mortgage. Even if you get an adjustable rate mortgage, your payment will stay within a certain range for the entire life of the mortgage – and interest rates are not as volatile now as they were in the late seventies and early eighties.
Remember, with owning a home, you are securing an investment, with renting and rent increases, you are not. Which makes more sense?

3- Forced Savings! Some people are not that good at saving money, but owning a house is an automatic savings account. You accumulate savings in two ways. Every month, a portion of your payment goes toward the principal. Admittedly, in the early years of the mortgage, this is not much. Over time, however, it does accelerate. Second, as your home appreciates.
Average appreciation on a home is approximately five percent, though it will vary from year to year. Over time, history has shown that owning a home is one of the very best financial investments one could ever make

4- Freedom & Individualism! When renting a property, you are limited on what you can do with improvements. You have to get permission to make certain types of improvements. It simply does not make sense to spend thousands of dollars painting, putting in carpet, tile or window coverings when the main person who benefits is the landlord and not you.
Remember, your landlord wants to keep his expenses as low as possible; he or she will not be spending much to improve the place, either. When you own a home, however, you can do almost any type of improvement. You get the benefits of any improvements you make, plus you get to live in an environment you have created.

5- Freedom of Space! Indoors and outdoors, you will probably have more space if you own your own home. Even moving to a condominium from an apartment, you are likely to find you have much more room available – your own laundry and storage area, and also it could be bigger rooms.

Apartment complexes are more interested in creating the maximum number of income-producing units than they are in creating space for each of the tenants. If you are moving to a home for the first time, you are going to be very pleased with all the new space you have available. You may have to even buy more "stuff."