It feels like a major accomplishment.
While many of your friends were taking grand vacations and going on lavish shopping sprees, you stayed back and worked an extra shift. While your friends were constantly trading in their cars for the newest and latest models, you kept driving the paid in full car that got you through college. You did not keep yourself back from all of the fun, but you opted out of the expensive plans. When your friends were spending the day on a long bike ride with a reward of tacos at the end of the night, you went. When the college gang met for a weekend of beach volleyball and some kayaking, you went. But when the plans were elaborate and expensive, you passed and found a way to earn a little bit of extra money while your friends were on their adventure.
After four years of this approach, you reached your goal. You spent some long evenings and weekends with a real estate agent looking at new homes, and you finally found the one that made the most sense. With a significant amount of money set aside for the down payment, you were able to approach these houses for sale knowing that the payments could be manageable. The real estate agent was great about finding you the houses that best fit your goals: the right price, the right size, and the right neighborhood.
Your new home is now the gathering spot, the day place where the backyard cookouts happen, the departure point for the upcoming bike rides. You missed out on a few trips for awhile and you may not have always been wearing the latest and most popular fashion, but you feel like your choices were worth it. Your new home provides you an opportunity to make an investment in yourself every month that you make a payment, rather than continually throwing away your money on rent.
New Houses Provide an Opportunity to Invest in Yourself
Whether you are looking for luxury houses for a retirement investment or you are looking for your first home, the real estate market is often a profitable and initial way to get started creating a stable financial future. Staying within your budget and making the required payments will help you work toward owning your first home, or at least building equity in a property.
Later, home buyers can turn their initial investment into a downpayment on a larger home at a later date if they want to meet the growing needs of a family. The key first step, however, is getting yourself started in the whole real estate process.
Consider some of these statistics about the home buying and selling process:
- 20% of buyers seek to purchase a townhouse, instead of a home, according to Zillow.
- At a slightly higher rate of 23%, millennials are the most likely to look at townhouses as real estate options.
- 48% of the buyers interested in brand new homes indicate that the most desired feature they are looking for is energy-efficiency.
- 32% of people looking to buy new homes are first time buyers.
- 34% of recent buyers who purchased new homes indicated that they were looking to avoid problems with plumbing or electricity, as well as other kinds of immediate renovations.
- 50% of respondents indicate that being able to walk to work or entertainment options is either the top or a high priority factor in deciding where they want to live, according to a recent survey by Urban Land Institute.
- 56% of millennials prefer to live in more walkable neighborhoods.
- 46% of baby boomers prefer to live in more walkable neighborhoods.
- 73% of respondents indicate that they have been considering homeownership for less than three months, according to a recent survey by the website Realtor.com.
- 61% of homebuyers in 2017 will be under age 35, as predicted by Realtor.com.
- 48% of buyers look for homes that have never been lived in, according to Zillow.
We live in a time when many people are interested in immediate gratification. From taking trips abroad to buying the latest fashion of clothes, shoes, and cars, many of today’s consumers want their rewards right now. With a less short sighted goal in mind, however, a growing number of young consumers are looking at home ownership as their first major investment.
