When I bought my first home, my Dad gave me a good piece of advise: "Don't look at it as an investment, look at it as a home." What he meant was, you have to l

When I bought my first home, my Dad gave me a good piece of advise: "Don't look at it as an investment, look at it as a home." What he meant was, you have to live somewhere NOW. If you make some money at some undefined future point all the better, but right now you need a roof. But even if you lose money selling it later, unless things really go to hell, you'll probably lose less than you would have paid in rent over an equal period of time. And there's intangibles to owning a place that you can say is yours. I don't have to worry about drunken parties above my head, or finding parking, or my neighbor catching the building on fire trying to cook. If stuff breaks I can fix it, not have to wait for maintenance to get there "sometime" (my last apartment before I bought the house, the AC went out. In Alabama. In August. It was 90 degrees inside for 4 days before maintenance finally got around to fixing it).