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S) In fact, whether you buy a home or rent one requires a great deal of care- ful thought. What's the best course of action entirely depends on your individual circum- Owning your own home is a worthy objective - but not necessarily a good investment. Weigh pros and cons of home ownership o "Yvonninittl3M-3000. . ....e.......o.qoooeqoooqoooqooooooooooooeoo stances. For exam- ple, if your job or occupation calls for you to do a lot of traveling, you may be far better off to rent either a house or an apart- On the other hand, if you hold a steady job with a company that seems to have a ment own your own business in a pro- gressive communi- ty, then you should consider buying a home. One of the great thrills in life is the feeling you have when you move into your own home for the first time. H o w e v e r . good future, or you before you make the purchase, you should weigh the advantages and the disadvantages. On the plus side is the psychologi- cal factor; the deep satisfaction you get from home ownership, espe- cially if you like to garden and tinker around with home Improvements. The satisfaction will be all that much greater if you made a good buy. In other words, you bought the house at a rea- sonable price and the cost of the mortgage is well within your means. ANOYNEI ROVAI. tsPAtbF. ADVANIAO! Dorothy Thomson, Sales Mimosa welcomes Sylvia Murray, S es Rmesematjve at Royal LePage, 2 Lakeshore Rd. est Branch. Sylvia can be mahed at our office by calling 825-1171. Please join us in welcoming her. 2448 Lakeshore Rd. W. Oakville 825-1 171 -sy'dta4%g.NrilEa-thrtirerq.Lh1.tyr9mr ROYAL LEPAGE SYLVIA MURRAY Keep in mind that there are many other costs associ- ated with home ownership in addi- tion to your monthly mortgage payments. Such things as munici- As a general rule, you should only buy a property that is three times your annual income. your investment portfolio. (Harry Pf. Mardon, a free- lance busines‘ journalist, writes this column on behalf of Winnipeg-based Investors Group Inc. - a financialI services company).] In time. of course, you may decide that the advantages of owning a home outweigh advan- tages of renting. By then, you should have saved enough money for a good-sized down payment on a, home. But profess" sional financial planners recom- mend that you should keep some of your savings still at work in pal taxes, utility costs, and upkeep of the house and garden. These costs should be established or cal- culated before you make an actual purchase. And what's equally important is to check out the gen- eral neighborhood. If it is starting to deteriorate, you may have great difficulty in selling the house later on. Right now, it is a buyer's market for housing in most parts of Canada. That means you may have difficulty in getting a good price for your home if you want to sell it so that you can move into larger, better accommodation or move to another community. There are cer- tainly some advan- tages to renting. Your costs are clearly laid out, and you should have money to invest after all your living expenses are cov- ered. These sav- ings can grow sub. stantially if the money is soundly invested. The last thing you'll want happen is to suffer a loss if youve forced to sell your home. Ideally, you should have a capital gain when the time comes for you to sell the house. That gain is tax- free.