Argumentative Essay on Benefits of Home Ownership

The United States of America is a country with many opportunities because Americans are very creative and innovation to create different jobs. This is in pursuit to achieve their main ideas of which they called American Dream. The American dream is to ensure that it become a great country through home ownership (Stegman and George, 2000). This dream is to encourage every American to own a home in order not to pay rent. It is also seen as an achievement of freedom and security to the people of Americans as it creates a sense of perpetuity (Hevesi, 2001). Otherwise, payment of rent for the rest of your life is a sign of instability and over dependence and therefore it should be avoided. The personal aspiration to enhance personal life and condition helps to achieve American's dream. Although it is not easy to achieve American's dream, it can be done through commitment and risk taking. This paper seeks to analyze the benefits of home ownership in the USA.

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To establish, this dream, it is a must for Americans to have strong financial adequacy (Hevesi, 2001). Because of weak financial stability, it is not easy to own a home more so for families of lower income group. Since the economy of America keeps on fluctuating, it, therefore, causes housing prices to fluctuate too and these influences some challenges in home ownership in America. There is a close correlation between housing prices and cost of materials, required manpower and building period. These factors must be re-assessed to overcome home ownership challenges for Americans to obtain their dreams.

Currently, America is different from the way it used to be in the mid-1800s. It has grown significantly as compared to other nations in the World. This is because they have tried to fulfill their dream of home ownership (Hevesi, 2001). Nowadays, America is ranked first as the country with more houses in the World. Although it is the best, it also has some challenges that it has failed to overcome. Statistics shows that in every seven Americans, one of them has housing needs. It also evident that 13.7 million Americans have no homes and more than half of their disposable incomes is used for housing purposes only. Federal Government has made serious attempts to overcome it, but it has never improved. This is because they are mainly focused on enhancing public housing and subsidizing rental housing for needy citizens. All these solutions which the Federal Government is taking are only acting as a bandage rather than a cure for housing problems in America.

For the Federal Government to solve this issue once and for all, it is vital to re-consider our national independence ideals, personal creativity, and self-ownership. They must also ensure that the state of the American economy is strong and able to support economic growth for all Americans. The citizens must also be encouraged to strive to achieve the American dream of home ownership (Stegman and George, 2000). The current housing market requires some questions that need to be answered by Americans. What it seeks to know is there is still housing shortage is America. It only means that there is need to know if the housing demands are higher than the available houses in America. Through the use of demand and supply curve, the home prices of public houses have reached its equilibrium point, but the price for different families is above the equilibrium point. This is a significant indication that most families are not able to access affordable housing in America and therefore they can only benefit from externalities which are created immediately someone owns a house. The free benefits that can be achieved include economic growth, a decline in crime rate, increase the level of literacy and good health conditions of the people (Hevesi, 2001). The result of market demand curve shows the private gains but cannot show the spillover benefits which are also enjoyed by people with no proper housing. Being unable to determine the total benefits causes a poor distribution of wealth to housing products. This fails the entire real estate market that requires the correction from the Government to rebuild correct market equilibrium.

The current policies that Federal Government use to promote home ownership program in America is to ensure that low-income earners have a house to rent at a fordable price (McConnell et al, 2002). These policies are implemented through the use of federal Section 8 programs which allow for the subsidization of housing for low-income earners. Notwithstanding, rental properties policies were determined to have some problems. The Government also subsidizes homeownership that provides rental houses for low-income group. This policy can only work when the Federal Government sets price floors and price ceiling to interfere with the free market. The Government will, therefore, ensure that these landlords are allowed to get excess profits of low income as compared to the income they can get from the open market (McConnell et al, 2002). The use of the rental system is also able to cause housing degradation because both the house owner and the tenant will lose the desire to take care of the house. In order to achieve the American dreams, it is important for Federal Government to avoid using rental housing policies but instead, motivate people with private homeownership needs to build their houses (Stegman and George, 2000). This can be done by building houses to needy people or introduce housing finance programs that ensure that people build their houses through the use of home mortgages and reduction of mortgage interest rates. The application of this kind of policy will be able to strengthen economic condition of the country and minimize routine micromanagement of the entire housing market.

Many payoffs result from the increase in home ownership in the USA. Buying a house help in making homes affordable in the USA and also increase financial strengths and autonomy (Boyer et al., 1996). Since home ownership is also one way in which American citizen can accumulate wealth. This is because home ownership can provide monthly income which translates into huge income at the end of every financial year. Statistical result in 1999 indicates that 73.8% are tenants whose income is below $40000, 37.5% earns below $20,000. This group of people can only pay monthly rent while house owners receive rent as part of their income (McConnell et al., 2002). There are other economic benefits that homeowner can derive from the use of the mortgage. Homeowners can benefit from mortgage interest and real estate taxes on houses because all these payments are tax deductible. This increases the income level of homeowner.

Furthermore, because of price exploding for rent, people with housing needs have low mortgage payment than those paying rent nowadays. The final benefit that homeowners earn the community is that they help the Americans to achieve their dream (McConnell et al., 2002). Through this, they can improve their economy that enhances their civic pride. From a long time ago, America has been seen as a land of tremendous changes, their dream to own houses is persistent to date (Hevesi, 2001). It is, therefore, an absolute need for Federal Government to implement all policies that promote home ownership for Americans to achieve their home ownership dream. This action will increase the economic growth of America and also increase the prosperity of America. Work Cited

Stegman, M and George M. (2000) "Housing America's Working Families," New Century Housing 1.1McConnell, et al. Economics: Principles, Problems, and Policies. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 2002. Hevesi, Dennis."Cracks in a Pillar of Affordable Housing." New York Times.18 November 2001, late ed., sec 11: 1. (4 March 2002). Keyword: Affordable Housing.

Boyer, Paul S., et al. The Enduring Vision; A History of the American People. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Co., 1996: (240, 485)