American Home Week 2019: Real benefits to buying a home

I saw Suze Orman on the NBC “Today Show” a couple of weeks ago. She said that the key to retirement is owning a home and becoming debt-free by the time you retire. Suze was talking about making sure you have enough money when you retire because people are living so much longer today than 40 years ago. Carson Daly asked Suze about millennials and how many of them don’t feel they will ever be able to afford a house. Carson is probably asking about this because he lives in New York City where it costs $1 million to buy a 600-square-foot condo. We are fortunate to live in the most affordable county in the Bay Area and we are also lucky to have loan programs for buyers who make less than $163,000 per year to purchase a house with as little as $1,000 out of their pocket. We are also lucky to be in a county where a veteran or active duty military buyer can buy a house using his or her VA benefit with zero down payment. Bottom line is this: After 40 years of analyzing loan applications and financial statements I am 100-percent sure that buying a home and locking into a fixed-rate house payment protects folks from inflation. If a person never buys a house, they can retire financially secure, but they better have invested $500 to $1,000 per month for the previous 40 years and make sure to get a 7 to 10 percent rate of return because renting a house in Vacaville in 40 years could cost $6,000 per month.