The biggest reason to buy a home rather than rent a house or apartment is because you have to pay to live somewhere. Why would you pay monthly rent over your lifetime to someone else when you can own it after 30 years? In many cases, you can buy a house and have a mortgage for less than you would pay on an apartment.
Buying a house means you make an automatic, forced investment every month in paying for something you can own. And over the long term, owning is 95% of the time better than renting or leasing. It is a hedge against inflation. In many cases, housing prices go up. People always need homes and in some metroplexes, over time developers simply run out of room to build which means it will get more and more competitive, and therefore expensive, to buy a home.
Keep in mind that when you buy a home and have a mortgage, you don’t actually own the home. Once you pay off the mortgage loan, then you own the home. One important part is knowing that for the amortization schedule, the front of the payment schedule you pay the most interest on the loan. So, if you want to make a dent and move through the amortization schedule faster, it is always best to pay more in the first few years so that you can reduce the amount of interest paid to the bank over the lifetime of the loan. An added bonus is that the more you pay up front the more quickly you can pay off the house, because you are increasing the rate you will move through the amortization schedule.
When we worked to pay off our home, we made the payment of extra principal a game. We had 7 pages for our amortization schedule. When we paid extra on our principal, we would strike through the extra mortgage payments as we went. We made it a goal to throw a mini celebration every page of the amortization schedule that we went through. I would put a big X on the page and then we would move to the next one.
One benefit of putting more on the house earlier is also that you will only see the true benefit of your extra payments once the house is fully paid off. This makes you learn to be consistent and to not give up. If you persist, you will make progress. We paid our home off after 8 years on a one household income.
It is possible to own your home. You simply need to choose to put extra down at the beginning of the month, like clockwork. Make it automatic and you will reap the benefits of having a home paid for in full. The benefit is that you have more opportunity to choose what you want to do with your money when you have no more debt. Owning gives you a lot more options and sets you up for a future that is unlike others who simply decide that they will just live with debt. You can do it. Believe and then take the steps, choose to buy rather than rent and then work to own your own home.