A retiree who 'never made big money' says owning property made his retirement possible, and young people shouldn't overlook it

Courtesy of Corky Ewing

Corky and Patti Ewing.

• Southern California couple Patti and Corky Ewing never made more than what was considered a middle class income, but say that owning property is one of the factors that will make their retirement possible and comfortable. 
• Corky says owning property was important to his retirement, and that he'd tell any young person to invest in property. 
• If he could turn back time, he would have bought even more, he says.
• Read more retirement coverage in Business Insider's series, Real Retirement.

Corky Ewing and his wife Patti make what is considered middle-class income in pricey southern California, and have for years. 

"We didn't ever make big money," Corky tells Business Insider. Patti worked as a machinist for 38 years, and Corky ran his own cleaning and restoration business. "We're just pinching ourselves that we're even able to think about retiring," he says.

Their household's combined taxable income never exceeded $120,000 per year. In San Diego, near where they live, between $50,000 and $150,000 is a middle class income. Despite the fact that they lived in an expensive housing market and made a fairly average income, the Ewings were able to generate extra income using real estate, and it's a strategy Corky would recommend his younger self rely on even more. 

Corky and Patti own four homes between the two of them: They live in one, and the rest are used as rental properties. They built their first home together near San Diego after getting married in their mid-20s, and started saving for retirement early and buying stocks around the same time, two other essential contributors to their retirement savings. 

He says he's glad he started young. "Everything seems so high here in Southern California," he says. "It seemed high when we were building our house. But, you just do it because you're young."

Using real estate as an investment was a key part of his plan to build wealth over a lifetime. "I would tell young people, 'look, you buy a rental and rent it out for what the payment is, and you're going to make a lot of money when the mortgage is paid for,'" he says. "You're going to have a great income right off of that."

Many of today's young people are hesitant - or unable - to buy property

As of 2015, about 32% of millennials owned homes according to the Urban Institute. 

For many millennials, especially those who came of age during the housing market crash of the Great Recession, there isn't much confidence in real estate as an investment. A 2018 survey by Value Insured shows just how wary millennials are of owning property, with just 48% of American millennials saying they think buying a home would be a good investment.

With millennials waiting to buy homes longer, they could be missing out on a huge opportunity to build wealth. In 2017, The Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham reported that homeowners had an average net worth 45 times higher than that of renters, citing data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances. 

There are a lot of factors keeping young people from buying homes, from student loans to stagnant wages and increasing housing costs. Millennials also tend to be a risk-averse generation, and many of them are not buying simply for that fact. 

From his own experience, Corky says buying real estate was one of the things that helped him beat the odds he felt were stacked against him as a median earner without a college degree in an expensive market.

"If you're a young person, you have to believe that when you buy a house, it's going to go up in value," Corky says. "Maybe that's why a lot of young people aren't buying homes - they're renting more and longer because they just don't believe it."

Planning to retire later in 2019, he and his wife will use rental income from their properties as part of their retirement income, including rent from the building where his business is run after his company is sold.

He says that if he could turn back time, he would have found a way to invest more heavily in houses. "Knowing what I know now, what stuff is worth here in southern California," Corky says, "I would have found a way to buy a couple more houses."

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