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Welcome to It's a Good Life with Brian Buffini, founder of America's largest business coaching company. Here's a short classic cut from one of our all time favorite episodes.

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Well, the top of the morning to you. Excited to be with you here today. We're going to cover a topic that is in my sweet spot and something I've been wanting to talk about for quite some time. Today I'm going to be covering the magic of owning a home. And I'm very excited to share just some principles here, some that you already know and some that you might need reminding of. They call it the American Dream. I've been all over the world and it's a dream everywhere you go. Food, shelter and clothing are the three predominant needs of humanity. And owning a home answers one of those. There's just nothing like owning your own home. You know, every time you close that door when you go into your home, that secure sound is how you feel. It's your home. Marvin Ashton said home should be an anchor, a port in a storm, a refuge, a happy place in which to dwell. A place where we are all loved and where we can love. We're going to cover a whole bunch of good stuff here today. We're going to cover the dream itself. We're going to cover how it increases personal wealth. We're going to cover how owning a home and the magic of it enhances personal well being. We're going to talk about how it promotes stronger families and neighborhoods. And we're going to talk about how it's good for the overall economy, especially in the area of growth and development. A lot of folks make very strong statements about anyone who owns a home today is kind of a moron, it's kind of a loser investment. And there's a lot of people, they open their mouth and insert foot and the reason being is they just don't understand the dynamics behind it. They don't understand the primal urge to own a piece of the rock. They don't understand the economic benefits. And so you get caught up in looking for the latest cool thing to say. That's a bunch of crap. The bottom line is it has absolutely been for the last 150 years and it will be for the next 150 years the best place to grow a personal fortune. The best place as an investment to grow your own personal well being. You know, when you invest in stocks, it can make you feel good when you look at this statement, but it doesn't change how you live. It doesn't change who you are. But owning a piece of real estate does. And the science and the facts are there to bear it out. We'll be covering all that stuff today. A lot of people are promoting today and oh yeah, you're better off renting. Well, you know, when you rent, you build your landlord's wealth. When you own, you build your own wealth. So I want to walk you through this today because if I'm an advocate for anything, I'm an advocate for this. So first and foremost, owning a home, it's the dream. It's the dream. The American dream is thrown around a lot. Owning your own business or being a millionaire, whatever. But the American dream has always been classified as an aspiration to own your own piece of real estate. And the first part about the dream, it's an aspiration of the heart. You know, Ralph Waldo Emerson 100 some years ago said, a house is made with walls and beams. A home is made with love and dreams. You see, you buy a house, but it becomes a home. The house is the physical asset that gets acquired. The home is the emotional connection that's driven to it. You want to know how people feel about a home? Take an hour on a Saturday morning and sit in the parking lot about 9 o' clock on a Saturday morning outside a Lowe's or a Home Depot. And that'll tell you what people think about their homes. And people are pouring their spare money and their spare time into something not just for economic benefit, not just for asset growth, but for something that makes them feel a certain way. It's an aspiration of the heart. The next thing is, it's a goal of the mind. A goal, by definition, is the end to which all effort is directed. I'm going to say this to you. Having a home and buying real estate, even buying investment real estate, is a phenomenal goal to set your mind on and a great set of goals to have as the end to which all your efforts are directed. The last part of the dream is that it's a physical achievement. You know, it is. It's a badge of honor. You can take pride of ownership, okay, without finding your identity in it, but you have that pride of ownership. That's what's going on on Saturday morning at that Home Depot. It's a pride of ownership. It's a personalization. It's very, very powerful. And so the dream, it's an aspiration of the heart, it's a goal of the mind, but it's this physical achievement. But wait, there is more. The second major point I want to share with you about the magic of owning a home. It increases your personal wealth and it does so in three ways. Appreciation, debt reduction and tax benefits. Here's the truth about real estate. You buy good locations, you hold it. And then this quote here, don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait. Don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait. That is a winning formula for real estate. So it appreciates over time. And so that is something that in my last 30 years I've seen significant amounts of appreciation. Simultaneously, there's something else we get a chance to do which is reduce the debt. So now the asset can grow in value and simultaneously the debt we owe can be reduced, which means we're growing equity. But obviously we have total control over the ability to reduce the debt. You know, a renter doesn't have a chance to reduce the payment of the rent, but a homeowner has a chance to reduce the ultimate debt that exists against their property. The last piece to this, and it's the tax benefits. Now this is an ever changing world. The mortgage write off for many people is the difference between being a renter and being an owner. And so when you take what somebody pays in rent and you look at the mortgage reduction benefits you get and the tax part of that, that's usually the difference between being able to afford a home and not. It's a big deal. The Average homeowner has 44 times the net worth of a renter. 44 to 1 is a mic drop. What side of the equation do you want to be on? 44 to one in any sport, that's a big win. 44 to one. And so that's the mic drop. Owning a home, it's a dream, it's an aspiration of the heart, it's a goal for the mind, it's a physical achievement. It absolutely increases personal wealth with appreciation with debt reduction and with the tax benefits that come. But wait, there's more. It also enhances personal well being. Now I have been up to my elbows in looking at a lot of the research papers on this, the Brooking Institute. They said in American society, buying a home is a rite of passage, symbolizing that a person has achieved a certain economic status. Thus attaining this goal should increase an individual's satisfaction with his or her life. Now, you know, it's like saying, can money buy you happiness? No, it can't. Can a home buy you happiness? No, it can't. But can it contribute to your happiness? Absolutely. And then that last part is gaining confidence Hey, I did it before, I can do it again. I set this goal to achieve this well, maybe I can set the goal to lose weight. Maybe I can set the goal to put my kids through college. Suze Orman says owning a home is a keystone of wealth, both financial affluence and emotional security. The beautiful thing about homeownership, the beautiful thing about the free market system is you can change your status and you can do real well. And one of the ways to do well is to do well in the area for yourself and your family, in home ownership and providing that security. I'm just trying to say real estate been very, very good to me and it's very, very good for a lot of people. It's also very good for the economy. It generates growth in the economy. That's here. You ready for this? Now, I know that with all the stuff going on in the media, a lot of people don't realize that America is still by far the strongest economy in the world. It ain't close. The single largest segment of that is made up of 18% of the economy is housing, 13% on consumption spending and 5% on construction. And consumption spending is renting and owning homes. Okay. And also doing a little bit of fix up. And we'll talk about that here in a second. And so, I mean, this is a long, long time ago. Confucius said the strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home. And it's such a big deal. And so pride of ownership and home improvement. I've talked about it. Well, you see how big a part this is of the economy. Last year there was almost $400 billion. Billion with a B for home improvement stuff. Okay. The forecast for Do It Yourself home improvement by 2025 is $680 billion. So one thing I'm very excited about is our 10 year anniversary of what was the Brian Buffini show that became the It's a Good Life show. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary on St. Patrick's Day and we've been getting a lot of feedback. We brought in some super talented people to run the show. What we've heard from you guys is you want to hear some different things. So we are reimagining the show and in fact it's going to be now really heavily focused on being a show you can watch. So follow us on YouTube. So go to the Brian Buffini show on YouTube and you'll be able to see all these episodes and we're very excited. Here's the deal. Food, shelter, clothing. It's that goal I want to have. It increases the net worth. It's great for my family, it's great for myself. Enhances my own feelings about myself that secure for the family. And by the way, then I want to fix it up and make it even better. And when I do that, the whole economy keeps cooking. The last thing I want to say to you about the economy and it's just my own little advice which is buy real estate, hold and then buy some more. That's the key. Buy real estate, hold it and then buy some more. Been there, done that on all fronts. I just want to say this to you. Owning a home is a magical thing. And it's the magic I hope that you currently are participating in. Maybe you're one of those magical people like myself who makes this dream come true for other people. So if you're a real estate agent listening to this today and a certain percentage of our audience is, remember this is what you do for people every day. Remember this. It's the dream, an aspiration of the heart, a goal in the mind. It's a physical achievement. It increases the personal wealth with appreciation, reducing that debt and then those tax benefits. It enhances our personal well being, it impacts our self esteem, how I viewed by others, how I view myself compared to others, and then my own self assessment of achieving a goal and knowing my own competence and getting it done. It promotes stronger families and neighborhoods. It's good for the family, it's good for their kids, it's even good for their math. It's good for them to behave themselves and it's good for people to participate. And then at the end of the day, it's a big win for everybody because it generates such a massive, massive part of the whole economy. Real estate been very, very good to me. It changed my whole world. It continues to change my whole world. You know why I'm able to do something like this and share this message is because real estate has provided me with the income to go pursue the gifts God's given me to go help as many people as I can. I owe that to real estate. That's why I'm able to be with you today. So that's why when I speak about this stuff, it's from a point of conviction, it's from a point of experience. It's changed my life and it can change yours too.