I was listening to a podcast today and the question was asked “Do you rent or do you own”. I’ve been asked that same question several times over the years, both in person and on paper. For 2 decades I’ve answered “I own”, but what really is owning your home?
Like me, nearly everyone that says they own their home doesn’t really own their home. They bought a home and they still have a mortgage that can go into foreclosure if they were to fall on hard times and they risk losing the house that they made into a home and raised their family in.
As I wrote in January of this year, we paid off our mortgage. After only 13 years of living in our home, we were mortgage free for the first time in our adult lives. It was nerve racking because we emptied our bank account to do it, but it was also exhilarating, and surreal. WE FINALLY “OWNED” OUR HOME…or did we?
While I’m excited that we don’t have a mortgage, sometimes it’s hard to feel like we truly own our home. If you think owning your home is the American Dream, don’t take what I’m saying as being ungrateful of our situation.
The reason I feel this way is, while we are out from under the thumb of the mortgage company, we are still under the thumb of the tax man. We live in NJ. Like many on the coasts, that is a bigger thumb than where we came from in KY.
When we bought our home, we went from paying $900 a year in KY to $4200 in NJ. Since then, it has steadily increased to $6700+ a year. It’s re-god-damn-diculous. You’d agree if you saw our neighborhood.
And we have “low” taxes. I know people in north Jersey that pay in the range of $14,000-$20,000. Now, I’ve never seen their neighborhoods or homes, but they ain’t no James Gandolfini.
I don’t see a time where we wouldn’t be able to pay our property taxes, but my point is, I don’t believe that structure of paying for services is the right way to do things.
I had a conversation with Christy about it years ago, about how I hated property taxes and they need to abolish them. She said they were necessary to pay for public services, etc.
Now, her grandmother bought the home she lived in most of her life with cash. On day 1 she “owned” her home. But I posed to Christy, what if your grandmother was no longer financially able to pay for her food, utilities, AND her taxes?
Of course food and utilities are a necessity, so she has to pay for those. At that point she would be facing losing the home that she “owned” outright at closing after dutifully paying her taxes for the last 40 years. That argument made sense to her.
Owning your home, should be owning your home. No strings attached.
There are a lot of alternative ideas out there for replacing property taxes if you do a search. I can’t tell you what will work and what is fair, but what I do know is, none of us will ever truly own our home as long as the state has the ability to take it all away from us for not paying our “fair” share.