Okay I don’t have friends to ask…, but I have relatives and a lot of my parents’ friend circle and a lot of them apparantly own their homes… and apparantly there are a few that even own rental properties…
(USA, their social circle varies from Seattle, Boston, NYC, and Philly)
I’m with my parents and they own this house…
Does it really count as owning if you have a mortgage? (partly tongue-in-cheek, but only partly)
Edit: Bah, someone else already made this smart remark. That’s on me, I didn’t read the whole thread before posting.
Edit again to answer your “how common” question: Most of my older friends/relatives/acquaintances own their homes. Most of those younger than me do not. Or maybe it’s 50/50 by now? I’d have to make a list and try to count, but that’s too much trouble for a lemmy comment.
My parents never got a mortgage…
They sort of borrowed money from a friend that immigrated earlier and already established here and somehow was able to afford a house in Brooklyn, NYC.
Parents somehow accumulated enough from going around borrowinf money, plus their own savings, to buy a Philly home approximately at $100K in cash…
Of course they have to work overtime to repay those debts back to those friends and relatives they borrowed from…
Kinda like a “mutual aid” network… sort of… lol…
Eh, I’ll still count it. Even if it’s not a formal “mortgage” from a bank, it’s still a loan to buy a house.