Oh, For the Love of Real Estate!

Yes, I’m being cute with my title, but yeah, what’s not to love? Home ownership is one of the most satisfying experiences in the life of an adult. I speak from experience. It’s a personal investment that is also a home–a sacred space that we nurture with our labors and fill with our heart’s delights, especially our families, friends and pets. Can’t you just smell the dinner cooking?

It makes sense that some people never want to leave their home, even as they age into the echelons of perfection–they want to die in place in the comfort of the familiar. That’s a gift we can actually give ourselves if we want it. Our houses age with us, and even need major overhauls just like any corporal form. It’s not that we buy it and never attend to the arteries, circuitry and systems that make a home function optimally. We invest time, energy and money into our homes over the years, and we’re repaid for our diligence if we can weather the storms of life. There are no guarantees, as with anything in life, yet, homeownership has benefits that most will experience if they prioritize their investment.

A house is not just a quirky building with all the limitation of a person’s imagination and the capacity to render. We poke and investigate the structure, the foundation. We check the roof and examine the windows. We breathe in the air to see if we can find a place for ourselves. Looking high and low from beneath and overhead, we value the soundness against our desire for proximity to schools, markets and places we treasure. And, we conjure numbers and placements, and, we even count lights in the dark of night to ascertain the safety of the habitation. It all starts with a foundation, undeniably attached to the land, and ends with a family, residing within. That is a house that we make into a home.