5 Reasons to Own Your Home…What Are You Doing and Why?!

It feels weird to me when I hear so much talk about how high rents are in the city. It feels so weird to me when I hear people say they will never be able to own. As I have grown up in this great city of Vancouver, there has been this shift in the minds of many that owning is impossible. That renting is acceptable.

“This is the way of life now they say.”

Let’s take a closer look at reasons to OWN YOUR HOME.

5 Reasons to Own Your Home

1. Be Your Own Landlord;  Having the security of knowing that only the bank can kick you out of your home if you don’t pay your mortgage. That’s pretty sweet news to me, pay your mortgage and control your own fate. In a rental scenario, landlords can be much less dependable, even though tenants hold a lot of the control. At any given time your landlord may decide to sell (at which point you could have people coming in your home every day to look at it), renovate, raise your rent (There are some laws on this throughout Canada) or sometimes actually move in themselves. When you own, you’ll have a peaceful sleep knowing that you control where you live.
2. Build Yourself Some Equity; Building equity is one of the main benefits of owning your home. You don’t notice it while it’s happening, but at some point you’ve got an asset that can be used for almost anything. What you pay towards the principal on your mortgage (monthly or bi-weekly) increases your equity in the home. Your home acts like a piggy-bank by ‘saving’ the amount of principal you pay off your mortgage with each and every payment. When renting, all the money you pay to your landlord is his or hers, providing you with ZERO benefit. But of course having a roof your head is pretty sweet, I get it.
3. What Happens When You Sell; When you own your home and it’s your main residence, the value of the home appreciates from what you paid for it. When you sell your home, usually you do not have to pay tax on any gain from the sale. This is the case if the property was solely your principal residence for every year you owned it. (Talk to your accountant in this regards, there are various amounts of reasons that this could alter.) But that is a big win for owning a home, this is not so if your rent. Buy a home for x amount of dollars and sell for xx amount of dollars, you get to keep 3x amount of dollars.
4. Pride of Being a Homeowner; When you own, it gives you an immense amount of pride in saying this is all yours. You have the freedom to do what you want with it. You can paint, renovate, add hardwood flooring, new appliances. Heck if you want to you can put in that amazing shag carpet you’ve always wanted or paint the walls neon. You can do whatever you want because you own it, It’s your property. You don’t have a landlord that you need to ask for permission, nothing! If you’re a condo owner, obviously you must follow bylaw rules and typically need permission from the condo board to go through with interior renovations. However, it’s still your choice to do so and not someone else’s!
5. Make Some Money aka Income; Okay….this is a bit out of left field. But think about for a moment. If you own your own home. You are the landlord and you can be the one to rent out your place. Maybe you want to do an executive rental or even AirBnB. Of course there are some bylaws in place on these things if you own a condo or are in a Strata. But what is better than being able to make some income off of your place? Say you want to travel the world and disappear for a year or two. Then you can control the amount you choose to rent your place out and probably in this market make a positive cash flow!

Keep in mind that renting may be your only hope and that’s fine. The ultimate goal of all is having a roof over your head. But what I’m trying to get at is that you can own. It is possible and it’s all about patience for your long-term goals.

Let’s talk about your goals in Real Estate