Why you Should Buy a House, Even in Todays Market.
Russell Marsh
For the vast majority of people buying a property for a home will be the biggest financial decision they will ever make, and also the best one. It does seem to be more of a "British" thing than a European one though as a far higher percentage of Europeans are happy to rent their homes and don't see owning a property to be as important as the British do. Sometimes in periodic downturns in the market some people start to wonder if this concept is flawed but just by looking at a few facts we can easily prove that this is not the case.
Property consistently increases in value. This is an indisputable fact! Property in the UK shows an average 5% increase year on year although there are some 'dips' in the market there are plenty of surges too! If you put a 5% deposit down on a 150,000 property then you have spent 7,500. That house is like to go up between 7,000 and 8,000 in a normal stable year. If you could show a Stockbroker a virtually surefire way to make 7/8,000 from a 7,500 investment on the stock market year upon year he would probably bite your arm off to get to it.
Consider putting 15,000 into your stockbroker's hands and him getting a 5% gain for you which most would consider to be ok. Your profit would be 750. Compared to the average property increase figures previously mentioned it's not too hard to spot the better investment and this is just for an average year. There are periods when we are having a property boom (every 7/8 years or so) and some properties can practically double in value in the space of a couple of years.
There are also some lean times in the property market. Your property could possibly go down in value in the short term even if the overall trend over a period of time will ALWAYS be up.
If you look at it over a longer period of time, say you put 5,000 into the stock market in 1996 and the average S
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