My house is my house

reason beyond rhetoric

My house is not an investment.


It is a house.

I don’t intend to make money off it; I intend to live in it.

It is not its paper value that matters to me, it is its intrinsic value. I don’t care what it is assessed for, or what it would sell for, I am concerned about its ability to protect my family from the elements and meet our shelter needs.


It is my home.


So the status of the economy and the housing-sales numbers are meaningless to me. I am not looking to sell my home, I am looking to live in it.


So the concept of being “upside down” on a mortgage is meaningless to me, as it should be to everyone. To owe more on your house than it is “worth” is only meaningful if you have forgotten the true worth of a home.

And that is not found in money or marketability. It isn’t determined by your mortgage rate or your payoff amount. The true worth of a home is determined by its ability to meet your needs.

It is a family shelter, not a tax shelter.


And its value is pretty subjective. Yes, you can calculate approximately what a house will bring on the open market. You can add up the resale value of the structure and its components.


But you will be left with meaningless numbers on paper.


Because the value of a house is a compilation of the comforts it provides and the needs it meets. Inasmuch as most of us are accustomed to living inside, away from the snow and rain, and inasmuch as most of us love our families a great deal, it becomes likely that a home – to shelter us from the elements and give us a place of our own – is great value.


After food, our home is probably – in true terms – the most essential and valuable component of our life. It’s priceless.


The value of a home is found around the family din
ner table, in a sleeping baby’s crib, kneeling for family prayer in the living room, in the sentimentality and memory of years spent and lives lived.

The value of my house has nothing to do with my realtor or my banker. It is not a function of dickering and refinancing.


It is my home and my castle.


And yet some people see their homes as their wealth and retirement. They see home as an aspect of net financial worth.


For such people, their foolishness causes great stress, particularly in the wake of natural and international struggles. They despair when there is no need, they demand bailouts when none are supported. They see newspaper stories and go home wracked with uncertainty and fear.

Even though the roof doesn’t leak.


And the windows don’t need repairing or replacement.

And they will be warm inside against the blizzards of winter.

Their houses are perfect. The balance sheet doesn’t say that, the smiles on their kid’s faces say that.


So I recommend caution, and a little bit of courage. I recommend that the sky-is-falling alarmism that passes for journalism these days be ignored.

I also recommend that people remember what the American dream is – not to make a fortune off a house, but to have a house.

A place to call your own.


To retreat to and grow in. To raise a family in and attend to the greatest purposes and joys of life.


House are for living in, not investing in.

Anybody who forgets that will probably lose not only money, but peace of mind.


So it doesn’t matter if your house is upside down. Unless you try to sell it, the numbers and their relationship to one another are meaningless. It is moot to calculate the value of a house that is not for sale.

And my house isn’t for sale.


My house is for living in.


My house is not an investment, it is a house.
And several million people would be a whole lot happier if they could only get that through their mind.