The way we perceive buying a home has changed over the last couple years. Most of us no longer think of buying a home as a future source of equity to be tapped whenever we need some cash. Most of us no longer look at a home purchase as an automatic wealth accumulation vehicle. Today we buy a home because we like it and want to improve our lives, both physically and emotionally. We want to step up our lifestyle.
When you buy a new car, you are sometimes buying because the old one doesn't suit your needs. Maybe you need nothing more than transportation, maybe you need reliable transportation. Just as often you need to feel good, and sometimes that means buying a new car right out of the factory. The desired effect is almost a certainty, albeit quite temporary.
Today, if you buy a new home, the value may decrease, maybe. You could waste a year or two of improved lifestyle by waiting for more predictable times when there is more chance of value stability or increase. You could waste a couple years of the lifestyle upgrade. Why not just wait? Maybe buy a new car instead?
New cars are a lot different from new homes. Their value is almost guaranteed to decrease, not in a year or two, but as soon as you insert the key in the ignition and drive away from the dealer. The improvement to lifestyle is immediately noticeable, but it is almost guaranteed to dissipate over months, not years, of ownership. If you keep it long enough, it will be worth close to nothing.
Compare that to a house. Your lifestyle improvement is not limited to the driver of the new car, rather shared by the whole family, including the non-drivers, even the non-walkers if there are little ones. The lifestyle upgrade lasts years, not months. Although it's possible that the value will drop, at least it's not guaranteed to drop and it is likely to improve when the economy improves.
This is a great time to consider doing something for the whole family. Life's too short to delay making it better.
Comments(5)