The Perks of Being a Home Owner

September is an important month when it comes my house because four years ago my husband and I purchase it. It’s something I blog about, if you remember 1st Home anniversary, 2nd Home anniversary, and 3 reasons why I love owning my home. In the post from last year I mentioned that I’m building up value and not paying rent. With each year, this is one of the things that matters more and more, being one of the most important perks of being a home owner. Here is a handy calculator* at www.sunlife.co.uk/money/equity-release/how-much-has-my-house-made-me, which can help you discover how much money your house made for you. I do recommend using that, at least to have an idea how much you’ve made, if you own your home.

Repaying the debts acquired to purchase the house is one way that your house makes money for you. Of course, comparing that to paying a rent, which most of us do anyway. For us, the monthly repayments and renting a similar house are pretty similar. I imagine is the same situation in general. Besides this, houses go up in value. This might not make a lot of difference on a short term, like a couple of years. But, then, we all buy our homes with the intention of staying in them for a long time.

Our situation was even better, when it comes to good value for money, because the house we bought was in need of updating. That made the value of the house increase. Furthermore, we are continuing to updating and upgrading the house. Last year we’ve removed the old looking artex ceiling in the living room, hallway. This year we’ve continued with the kitchen, and we’ve also installed a new, modern, ceiling light. While these aren’t necessarily upgrades like installing a new boiler, they make the house look better and more appealing for a younger couple, thus improving the asking price if we’d decide we’d like to sell the house. Curb appeal is important.

For next year or, maybe I should say, couple of years, we have more projects in mind. Removing the artex from the bedrooms, updating the driveway, upgrading the flooring in the porch. I think all these will make us happier as the house will look and feel more comfortable. But, from a financial point of view, it will make our house better, easier to sell if we want to, more modern and light. New buyers are thinking of how much time and money they can spend doing all sort of things, so I really believe these things make a difference.

Of course, one of the most important things is that making the house better and repaying the loans for the house, makes you money. Money you can use if you fancy moving into a different house, maybe bigger or in another area that is more expensive. Right now we are happy with our house. As I said, we have some ideas of what to improve further. Thus, we don’t have any plans to move just yet. This will only increase valuation of our assets that we can benefit from in the future, like when we go into retirement.

In addition, the perks of being a home owner are so many. For example, privacy, you don’t have to deal with home checks that were quite invasive when we were renting, including a check when we were away with work. Painting the walls as you want them; for us is all white, is a huge plus too. It’s not everything great, there are some cons too, but I think the pros are much more important and have a bigger weight.

* Post in collaboration with Sunlife. All opinions are my own. I wrote the post according to my own experience and it represents my own views.