Benefits of Owning A Home
The Best Investment 
As a general rule, homes appreciate about five percent a year. Some years will see a greater increase, some smaller, and in some years there may be a decline in home prices. The figure will vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, and region to region. In California, the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets fare particularly well even in slow markets.
Five percent may not seem like that much at first. Stocks often appreciate more, and you could earn over six percent with the safest investment of all, treasury bonds. But take a second look! Presumably, if you bought a $500,000 house, you did not pay cash for the home. You obtained a mortgage. Suppose you put ten percent down. That represents an investment of $50,000 into a home purchase. At an appreciation rate of five percent annually, a $500,000 home would increase in value by $25,000 during the first year. That means you earned $25,000 on an initial investment of $50,000. Your annual “return on investment” is then a whopping fifty percent.
Of course, you are making mortgage payments and paying property taxes now. However, since the interest on your mortgage and your property taxes are both tax deductible, the government is essentially subsidizing your home purchase, and the return is still very strong. This is why most economists and financial planners agree that real estate is an excellent investment for many people.
Income Tax Savings
This is a tremendous benefit, and makes it possible for many people to afford more in mortgage payments than they can in rent. All of the interest and property taxes that you pay in a given year can be deducted from your gross income, significantly reducing your income tax burden. The tax deduction should increase your monthly cash flow if you are a salaried employee, and cut the amount of taxes you must pay quarterly if you are self-employed. The difference can be quite dramatic.
For example, assume your initial loan balance is $500,000 with an interest rate of 7%. If you begin making payments on January 1, you will pay approximately $35,000 in interest in that year. This means that your taxable income for the year will be reduced by $35,000. If you purchased your home for $600,000, you will also pay property taxes of about $7500 per year, and this amount is also tax deductible. It is very important that you talk to your tax adviser to help determine what your cash flow will be once you have the tax deduction, so you can properly revise your withholdings at work.
Forced Savings 
Many people have a difficult time saving money, and a house is an automatic savings account. You accumulate wealth in two ways.
Every month, a portion of your payment goes toward the principal. In the early years of the mortgage, this may not be much, and you may even opt to pay interest-only in order to maximize your tax deduction. Over time, however, you will begin to pay down the principal, building equity that you can eventually retrieve, either through selling the home or borrowing the equity from the house. Second, the value of your home appreciates. Average appreciation on a home is approximately five percent per year. In areas such as Los Angeles, the appreciation over the long term has proven to be much higher. Overall, history has shown that owning a home is one of the very best financial investments.
Freedom and Individualism
When you rent, you are limited in what you can do to improve your home, to make it yours. You need to obtain permission to make just about any changes. And it does not make sense to spend thousands of dollars painting, installing new floors, or replacing the kitchen counter, when the main person who benefits from your investment is the landlord, not you.
When you own a property, you have the freedom to create the home that you want. You receive the lifestyle and financial benefits of any improvements that you make, and you can live in an environment created by you, not by a landlord motivated by minimal expenses and maximum profits.
More Space
Both indoors and outdoors, you will probably have more space once you own a home. Even moving to a condominium from an apartment, you are likely to find you have more room available—your own laundry and storage area, and larger 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.