Owning a house

One more cousin owning a home from today. And one more time I curse my luck rather than my laziness (in finding/building one). 5 years since I started working... and 5 years of "efforts" to buy some property. Property prices always seem to be "just a little more" than I could afford. Lucky are the ones who own one (some have more!!!). Property prices seem to be heading in just one direction...upwards. Growth rate of investment in property beats any other form of investment. Though govt. bonds and other saving schemes are called "safe" and at the max give a return of 8% annually, I feel property is the safest investment with the best returns! As my dad would always say,"You are wasting your hard earned money, if you do not invest properly and it doesn't grow atleast at the rate of inflation".

Bangalore has always been in the news in the last few years for the burgeoning real estate market. A huge chunk of Indian IT professionals have made Bangalore their abode (if not permanent, atleast for now). And with IT salaries rising at a rate of atleast 10% in the last 5 years (need help in keeping the taxmen away - hikes expected in our company this month!!!), property prices don't seem to be losing steam anytime soon. And with RBI increasing the repo and reverse repo rates, lending rates for home loans have gone up. Added to that news of "serious thoughts" being given by finance ministry on removing tax benefit on home loans is the icing on the cake for me to be more lazy on the house search front.

What will happen tomorrow when I get married and my wife, and in future my kids, do not like the house I buy? If I'm in rented house, I can aways shift to something else. And with this "intelligent logic" from a lazy bum, I'm back to my deep slumber......zzzzzzz.......(till my dad wakes me up again) ...................