Paying Cash for Primary Residence

[Ace A.]

Hey guys, so I'm currently renting and looking to buy myself a primary residence. So, if you could pay cash for your primary residence, would you want to and why / why not?

I heard even, Mark Zuckerberg has a mortgage on his house, but it's a super low rate that only the elite has access to; 1% or something like that.

Note: I currently pay more taxes on my income then I would like to (Full time job, and a few rentals) and getting a mortgage would reduce my realized income.

[J Scott]

When possible, I'm a big fan of paying cash for all non-income producing assets -- cars, personal residence, vacation houses, etc. I'm not saying you should spend all your cash on your house, but if you have enough additional cash to handle personal/business cash-flow, I believe the upside to paying cash for your doo-dads (yes, a personal residence is just an expensive doo-dad) outweighs the downside.

Btw, I saw a great documentary the other day that really drove this point home. It's called "The Queen of Versailles," and is about a billionaire real estate investor during the 2008-2010 economic meltdown. Despite being worth billions (on paper), before the meltdown he made the decision to mortgage his previously paid-off 26,000 sf house because he loved the idea of using the cheap cash to grow his business. He regretted that decision when he had to borrow money just to pay his mortgage and keep his family from losing their home.