Growing up owning a home was always a goal for me. It wasn’t an investment goal (as many
consider it) but just a basic life expectation for me. Not that I haven’t considered investment
property, I have and still am considering it, but I’ve always believed you
should own the place you live in. Not in
the ‘American Dream’ sense, but rather in the personal responsibility
sense. We humans tend to care more for
things that we own. It’s easy to be
negligent or uncaring about someone else’s property.
My grandfather did both.
He owned his home and 6 others, all bought in cash. Even though he died when I was very young,
the knowledge of his life story has always stuck with me. An Irish Immigrant who came with little and
worked hard, to make a good life for himself and his family.
My dad always owned the home we lived in. My mother never did (they were
divorced). I got to see the stark
contrast between the life of a homeowner and the life of a renter. By and large, the life of the homeowner was
what I wanted.
I’ve read much about homeownership over the years. There is plenty of literature out there. Not everyone thinks owning a home is a good
idea. Moreover, there are very good
reasons to not own a home. I’ll not dig
into the argument for or against homeownership at this time
But if you are not in it for the ‘investment’ and truly just
want a place to ‘call home’, I still believe it’s the right choice.
So why did it take me 20 years after leaving my parents home
to buy a home? The short answer is
economics. However, that’s not the whole
story. From age 20-26 I was in the
Navy. A single grunt in the Navy really
isn’t in the economic position to buy a home.
And even if I was in an economically sound position, what’s the point
when I was moving or at sea a significant portion of my life? From my limited viewpoint, the opportunity
just wasn’t there in that environment.
In retrospect, I probably could have made it work.
I actually expected to buy a home shortly after leaving the
Navy. The housing market in 2003 was
about the same as it had been in 1997 when I joined the Navy. 2003 was a year of transition. I figured I
had plenty of time to get settled. By 2004,
the housing bubble had begun to grow and prices soared. I had missed the
window.
My life turned to a business and then marriage. The two quickly consumed any money I
had. The business failed and the
marriage continued. It took me a while
to recover from the business. All the
while the housing market bubble continued to grow. Even if I wasn’t recovering from my failed
business venture, the market was far beyond my reach.
The bubble burst in 2008 but somehow the LA housing market
managed to retain a significant portion of its inflated value. The notion of taking on at a minimum, $300k
of debt for a shack of house just didn’t appeal to me. A decent home in LA is still $500k+. So we watched the clock tick and the years go
by. And resolved to accept that
homeownership would not be possible as long as we stayed in California. So, the question became, how to “Escape from
LA”? Kurt Russell wasn’t going to be
much help this time.
We looked at candidate locations. Washington State, Colorado, Arizona,
Virginia, Tennessee, even Utah. I must
say Michigan, wasn’t even on the list of possibility. I had suffered through one great lakes winter
in Boot Camp and had no desire to ever live this far north in the Midwest
ever.
But God has plans, and He crushed every opportunity that I
thought was where I wanted to be. He
then opened up the opportunity, which brought me here and shoved me through the
door.
2 decades after moving out of my parent’s home, I now sit in
my own den in my own home typing my thoughts on homeownership. I’m amazed by the journey that has brought me
here. If someone had told me I’d buy my
first home in Michigan of all places, I’d have never believed them. Why on earth would I ever move to Michigan?
Moreover, if someone had told me that my first home would be
in a village with a population of less than 2000 people, never could I have
fathomed that would be true. I’m a big
city guy married to a bigger city girl.
You know that Depeche Mode song “Blasphemous Rumors”. God truly does have a sense of humor. But He also has a great plan, and His plan
for me is to own a home in middle of now where Michigan, in a village that has
fewer people than my high school. I
don’t know or understand why I’m here, or what God’s plan is for me here.
What do I know? I
know I live in an amazing home, with beautiful land. I know I paid less for it than a cheap condo
would have cost me in Los Angeles. I
know that whatever God’s plan is, this is now home and it’s my home. I know my children have a place that is
theirs. I know I could never have
achieved my goal of homeownership, if I wasn’t willing to follow God to the
most unlikely of places for me to go.
I KNOW I’M HOME!
45 Days
8 hours
30 minutes
32 seconds
But who is counting?
