We didn’t somehow earn more money from the family home when the property market was exploding, and we haven’t suffered any drop in income by the market going down.

It often balances itself out, anyway – if you sell, you’ll have to pay the current market price for your NEW house. That means your profit in a boom market will probably be wiped out, and your losses in the current one may largely be restored.

Incidentally, it’s annoying that the media have hyped up the emotion surrounding the whole issue by constantly referring to “the value of your home”.

It’s a HOUSE that has financial value. A home is beyond price.

Renting has many disadvantages. In many buildings, renters are stacked on top of each other. This gives you the ability to listen to neighbors as they play their jungle music, get it on, sometimes guys waking up both you and your neighbor at 3 am for a booty call. Neighbors can be the nosy type, especially those who don’t work, checking out who is coming in/out of the building, knocking on your door to ask you stupid questions as an excuse to check out your company.

There are so many restrictions on what you can do: pets, modifications, noise, parkins spots/# of cars allowed, sometimes # of guests allowed. Things break, you run out of oil and freeze while the land lord contemplates parting with $400. If your hot water tank goes, the land lord might make you wait the better part of a month while contemplating its repair/replacement. Worst of all, You give someone $$ every month and get nothing except a roof over your head.@ least with owning, you work towarde owning.

Here are some recent interesting posts from the MoneyBlogNetwork and beyond: Blueprint for Financial Prosperity reminds you to check your asset allocation. No Credit Needed got his van. Get Rich Slowly lists the seven habits of wealth. Consumerism Comm…

It largely only matters in two circumstances: (1) when you sell it and (2) if you are using it to secure a loan.

There are a few, limited cases for doing #2.

As for #1, unless you are moving quickly after buying, the odds are that you will break even or lose a little bit in the worse case. People who are being forced to sell right now because of inflating ARMs are not losing their shirt because of the housing crisis. They are losing their shirt because they couldn’t afford a house.

The rule used to be that you shouldn’t buy a place unless you planned to be there for at least 5 years. Anything less than that was sheer speculation if you were expecting to make money. At best you were preserving a way to recoup a percentage of your rental costs.

The way I look at it, my home’s value to me is in removing a recurring cost from my budget once it is paid off. Nothing more.