You Don't Own Your Home

Just a quick annoyance after the last post...

According to another article at NPR's website, 65% of Americans own a home.

No.

This is nitpicking to an extent, but I think it's an example of euphemistic marketing at a societal level. If you pay monthly on a mortgage, you do not own your home. The bank owns your home. If you stop paying, they will have you removed from the property that they own.

The same applies to automobiles, though I less often hear the same mistake made in that context. If I ask someone if they own their car, they will often specify that they are making payments on it, implying they don't yet own it. If I ask someone if they own their home, the same distinction is not usually made and mortgage payments somehow constitute ownership.

Bottom line, you only truly own your home when your mortgage is paid off.

Correlation does not imply causation

NPR had a story on yesterday in which they interviewed a potential home buyer and an expert -- I missed the beginning of the report so I'm unclear on the expert's background, but it doesn't matter. What he had to say was rediculous in any case.

The home buyer was lower income and looking at homes in range of $90,000. The expert was explaining the benefits of home ownership and the apparent need to expand home ownership even to those who are financially challenged and may have issues buying a home.

The expert explained that there are benefits beyond the normally cited investment and tax benefits. He said that home owners are more likely to, for example, have a college degree. The implication was that owning a home would help you or your kids get a college degree.

No.

Home owner's are more likely to have college degrees, more money, etc. There is correlation between those things and owning a home, but no demonstrated causation that owning a home leads to those things. It's much more likely that those things made owning a home possible.

I would expect more from an "expert" and more from a "journalist"... OK, in this day and age, anyone can be a journalist, but I would expect news organizations such as NPR to put some effort into featuring people with some investigate talent that actually question such silly statements instead of just parroting whatever they're told.