Owning a home is almost always what experts call a highly leveraged investment. That makes it a risky investment, even if it is hard to see risk in bricks. How does this work? Well, suppose you have a $200,000 home with a $180,000 mortgage on it. A 10 percent drop in your local housing market all but wipes out all of your home equity. If for some reason you can’t make your monthly payments, you might lose the house you were counting on for your retirement, along with everything you invested in it.
