It's official:  in the rent-versus-buy debate, "buy" won.

You'd think that after several years of scary real estate headlines, homeownership would be sporting a permanent black eye.  But no.  The latest Fannie Mae National Housing Survey, conducted last December and January and released April 6, tells us that "two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) prefer owning a home".

Which tells me what I already knew:  that the rent-versus-buy debate is no debate.  Instead, it's renters-by-choice, market timer wannabes and the Wall-Street-is-our-friend brigade on one side, the real estate industry on the other and, in the middle of all that noise and oblivious to it, the middle, normal people with no horse in the race and no ego at stake, people who, like most people, simply want to own their own home and get on with their life.

And get rich quick?  Sure, a few may still think that, although their numbers have thinned, according to the survey.  "Consumers are still committed to owning a home", says Fannie Mae's press release, "but are showing increased cautiousness...They are rebalancing their attitudes toward housing and homeownership by adopting a more realistic, long-term approach...".

And in fact, I've always thought that the economists and those skeptical of homeownership over-rate the profit motive of the average homebuyer.  The skeptics (and, apparently, the economists) are immune to the emotional lure of homeownership.  Does this make them a higher form of life?  Depends on who you ask, but I think it simply reveals their mindset:  a house is an investment, nothing more, nothing less, just another chance to grab the brass ring.  As an attitude it's either scientific and detached or cynical and materialistic, your choice.  Either way, it doesn't make the economists and skeptics a lower form of life, but it does suggest a certain disconnect from the other 65 percent.  Which is fine, I guess, unless you're an economist making a living explaining a reality you don't see and can't feel to people who do and can.

So if homeownership isn't all about the money, what is it about?  "Safety (43 percent) and quality of local schools (33 percent) [are] driving factors...ahead of financial considerations."  Which tells me what I already knew, and what any empathetic agent knows.  But I think it goes deeper than safety and schools.  It goes to a question just asked me by a frustrated client:  "Why are all these parents competing with me for homes in good school districts when they could rent homes in even better districts for the same monthly payments?"  Couldn't anyone qualified to buy a home rent in a safe neighborhood with good schools?  Possibly, even probably, so why don't they?  The desire to put down roots, to have some level of permanence, to be able to put their stamp on the homes they live in, these are drivers even more fundamental than safety and schools and far more defensible than the urge to make a quick buck.

Granted, very few will buy a home believing they'll lose money, and real estate's resurgence is no doubt fueled in part by the belief held by 73 percent of survey respondents that "housing prices will go up or stay the same over the next year".  But in twelve years of working with buyers, only one has asked me what I thought a home would be worth in five years.  The motivation of Joe and Mary Homebuyer is far more nuanced, and far warmer and fuzzier, than the economists and other skeptics think, suggesting that for many if not most of us there's more to life than "shrewd investments".     

And after the stock market's sparkling performance these past ten years, I wonder how the skeptics keep a straight face as they earnestly plead with you to put your money there, rather than in treacherous real estate.  Consider these ten-year average annual total returns, ripped from the pages of real life, or at least from the latest semi-annual report of a large mutual fund:

You'd better believe I'm feeling good about my fund's index-beating .90%.  Woo-hoo!  

So it's official:  there's debate, and then there's noise, and real life trumps them both.

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