I think the benefits of owning my home far outweigh being a renter. I stopped renting at 20 yrs old and have owned a couple homes for over the last 17 years. My husband and I have had this exact conversation many of times. There isn't much we can do about it. Freedom isn't free and Freedom isn't actually freedom but the illusion of freedom and we are the peasants who let our governments just run right over us. Ironically ending up in the same taxation system that the colonists left Britain to avoid in the first place.

I am also a real estate agent and I do agree with "location, location, location," being why a property is valued more near a lake or in certain almost rare environments. I do hate that the common man is now locked out of ever owning one of these rare locations unless he makes an incredibly awful amount of money or inherits it. But when the population numbers keep increasing everything becomes less tangible.

What kills me is that before they try to help homeowners keep their properties in a time of need, they force them out and let the house deteriorate and become a shit hole before selling it to some flipper for what they could have ended up with from the original mortgagee if they had given them a break on their payments for a while. We punish good people and reward the actual criminals by bailing out the banks and not punishing the embezzlers.