Seems like everyone has a different definition of owning something when it come to a home vs other things. My definition of owning anything is that once you have paid for it it’s yours for as long as you like own it, without ever needing to spend another cent. Seems pretty straightforward. If you have NOT paid off your mortgage then technically the bank owns your home, while you are responsible for all the maintenance. If and when you decide you don’t want to or can’t make your mortgage payments then the bank will happily take “your” home away from you. If you have paid your entire mortgage back you would think the home is finally yours right? Wrong. You still need to pay yearly Insurance fees/tax’s and if you decide or can’t pay those annual fees eventually the state will happily take “your” home away from you. So do you ever actually own your home? That depends on your definition of owning something. If your definition of owning means that you have paid for it and it’s yours forever without ever needing to pay another cent for it, then nobody actually owns the house or the property the house is on cuz it can always be taken from you if you refuse to continue to pay annual taxes/fees on it. If you have to pay annually for something you don’t ever technically own it. You are just renting/leasing with the added benefits of paying for all the maintenance, and the option of selling (what you have already put into it) when you like.
So a lot of the answers here are stating that just because you have a loan doesn’t mean you don’t own the house. And that’s true. But as a first-time homeowner, this was super confusing to me, too. I don’t own my car until I pay it off. And I don’t get the title to the car until I pay it off. But when you buy a house, you get the title deed. The mortgage loan is like a special case of an unsecured loan, insofar as the lender has no ownership stake in the property being purchased. Contrast that to a vehicle loan, where the lender is the second “owner” listed on the title until you pay it off and can apply for a title in just your name.
I’m a homeowner and I have a mortgage.
I can decide to do whatever I want to my house because I own it. I built a new door in the house and I repainted a room. I removed some phone ports and a grill vent.
When property taxes are due, I have to pay it. When the house goes up in value, those gains are mine.
Really I make all the decisions and do all the same things as someone who has paid off their mortgage. The only difference is that I owe money to a bank. That doesn’t mean I don’t own the house. It just means that if I don’t pay, I might have to give up my house. In that case, I still owned it until the bank took it from me.
Regardless of the whether you owe anything on the mortgage it’s still your responsibility alone to maintain the home, insure it, and pay taxes. If you want to do anything to the home, you don’t require the okay from the mortgage company. The home is an asset that secures the money you borrowed to pay for it.
Because you own part of a home and it’s a lot simpler to say “Are you a homeowner?” than it is to say “Do you partially own a home along with a bank in a mortgage agreement?”. Your current payment status is irrelevant to the idea of whether or not you’re what we commonly call homeowner rather than someone who rents.
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