Dear Karen: Just when our friends are considering downsizing or moving into retirement complexes, we may buy our first house, or maybe a condo. With both of us on teacher salaries all these years, we weren’t able to afford buying in our high-priced city previously.

Recently, my wife’s mother passed away. She left us a small inheritance that makes home ownership possible. We both have mixed emotions about this decision. We’ve lived in the same rental house for years and have few problems with it. Of course we’ve sometimes resented not being able to do what we want or get things fixed when we want. Thinking of our own little home puts smiles on our faces. And yet we’re fine where we are. — Home Sweet Rental

Dear Sweet: It does seem ironic to be considering this biggest of moves when your friends are moving the opposite way. Perhaps you’ve held up this dream for so long that you’re unsure what to do with it now that it’s attainable.

You’re right that there’s no obvious answer. What I can offer you are the advantages and disadvantages of home ownership, information about a special deal for first-time homebuyers, and perhaps some insight into how to evaluate these factors.

The main advantages touted for home ownership are privacy, investment potential, stability, more control in housing costs, community pride, and tax incentives.

Privacy: Owning a home allows you more privacy because there’s no landlord. If you end up buying a condominium, however, you could have less privacy from neighbors than your current rental house.

Investment: Over the long haul, a house is often a good investment, but only if you’re there long enough to weather economic cycles and average out major repairs. For better and worse, you would be in charge of all maintenance. Some people enjoy tinkering and fixing things, as well as the money they can save doing repairs themselves. If you haven’t been doing fix-it jobs all along, though, it could prove frustrating to start now. It could be even more frustrating to be shelling out cash for professional repairs when they’ve been free for decades.   

If you own a home long enough, appreciation may provide a larger estate for your inheritors, or more money towards your next housing if you move again. The cost is the flexibility that you’ve had up until now to leave at will.

Community pride: Neighborhoods with homes that are owner-occupied are generally thought of as more stable and higher in community pride. As a long-time resident, though, you likely have developed pride in your community. It would be your call whether you could improve on what you have.

Tax advantages: The tax advantages are real. Believing owned homes to be better for society, the federal government is fond of rewarding homeowners. Here are the main tax breaks:

1. FHA low-interest mortgages.
2. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, repurchases and guarantees mortgages, helping hold down interest rates.
3. Mortgage-interest deduction.
4. Property-tax write-off.

A recent addition to this suite of goodies by the federal government is to allow first-time home-buyers to put down just 3% instead of the normal 10% or 20%. But the Center for Economic and Policy Research says the default rate for a mortgagee who pays 3-10% down is almost 50% higher than for downs above 10%. If a low down payment is all you can afford, you may be setting yourself up for future heartache.

Just as an aside, it’s questionable whether these tax breaks are a good deal for us the citizens, who lose more than $200 billion a year in federal tax revenue. Other western countries have very few housing enticements and home ownership rates that are not much different, according to James Surowiecki in the New Yorker. The tax breaks may only serve to encourage bigger, costlier homes than otherwise.

If you were my client, I would encourage you to consider your last living situation. Where would you like to be living when you hit your 90th birthdays? If it’s a retirement home, then you might be well served by renting until you’re ready for that. Check out your local ones to see how they’ve changed from what you might imagine.

If you see yourselves in rocking chairs on the front porch of a little cottage together, with maybe kids or a visiting nurse stopping in to check on you, then it’s probably time to make that dream a reality. Bottom line: go with your heart, but bring your brain along too.

Meet Karen