As the owner of a property, you stand to benefit from any rise in its value when it comes to selling, from the income it can generate if you rent to tenants – and, of course, from the utility you get from living in or using it yourself.

Interestingly, the attractiveness of property ownership is partly dependent on culture. In the UK, for example, individual ownership is fetishist: “an Englishman’s home is his castle”. But in countries like France and Germany, the idea of someone not owning any real estate isn’t unusual at all.

jft