The true value of one’s home cannot be fully or accurately measured in dollars and cents. Your home protects you from the weather and those who seek to harm you, as well as protecting your tangible personal property. Then again, the neighborhood where your home is located is also an important consideration in determining the dollar value of the property that you own and live within.
So too, you cannot place a dollar value on the pride that you derive from owning your own home. After all, it is the place where you sleep, eat and entertain yourself most of the time when you are not at work. As such and to you alone, your home might be worth millions of dollars. On the other hand, a buyer of your home is only willing to offer what the market place determines as being a reasonable purchase price for the Real Estate in question.
In other words, your home is only worth what a willing and qualified buyer will pay for your home. That is, if you are willing to sell your home to such a buyer. Your home is no longer worth millions of dollars to you because your life changed and/or the neighborhood changed or you found a job that compels you to purchase another home closer to where your new job is located. Those reasons, in fact, are the three primary reasons why people sell their home.
Retirement or poor health and/or the downsizing of ones place of residence are three other reasons why people sell the home they have lived within for so many years. It should go without saying that a retired person might not be able to pay the expenses associated with the maintenance and the monthly operation of that home.
A retired person cannot fully enjoy the last years of their life if all of their monthly income is spent just to live within a home that now prevents that retired person from taking a vacation to a far away place or buying a new car or enjoying a hobby or hobbies that were not possible when that person was working.
Yes, selling your home and moving to another location is a life changing event, usually for the better. Then again, the dollar value of your home is usually equal to what a willing buyer will pay for a similar property within the neighborhood in which your home is located. That dollar value might not be to your liking and it is possible that the real value of your home is now lees than the amount of money that you paid for the property.
Keep in mind that you are not getting any younger and the new life that you want to live can only be realized by selling your home for the average price of homes like yours that are actually being purchased. Then again, will your home, in terms of real dollars, be worth more or be worth less at a future time?