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What Is a Home?
Let me explain what a home really means in practical terms. A home is the physical place where you or your household lives, but legally, it's your permanent residency—the spot you call home base, even if you're not there right now.
Key Takeaways
From a legal standpoint, your home is your permanent primary residence, regardless of whether you're currently occupying it. If you plan to return and haven't claimed another place as your main spot, that location still counts as your home. This status affects everything from the taxes you pay to your citizenship and the laws you follow.
Understanding a Home
You might think of home emotionally, but legally, it's tied to specifics like tax liability and your status in the country. It decides which state's probate laws apply, how taxes are collected, and even citizenship if you're living abroad. If you own multiple places, like a vacation spot or rental, your primary residence is your legal home. That means taxes on it differ— you get write-offs and deductions only for your main home, not the others.
Insurance works differently too. For your home, as an owner-occupied property, you need coverage that includes the building and contents. But for a rental, it's more about protecting the structure, and tenants handle their own stuff. Even if your home is empty while you're away traveling or in the hospital, it's still your legal home if you intend to come back and haven't shifted your residency elsewhere.
An Example of a Home
Take Mary Smith, who owns three properties. She has a beach house in New Jersey that she uses summers with her kids—it's empty in winter, so that's her vacation home. Then there's a condo in New York City rented to Kate Jones for $1,500 a month—that's an investment property.
Her main place is a two-story house outside Philadelphia where she lives with her spouse and three kids. They go to local schools, and she pays Pennsylvania taxes. That's her home, her primary residence.
Now, her oldest kid is applying to college. New York offers free tuition to residents, but Mary and her family don't qualify because their home isn't in New York, even though she owns property there. Kate Jones, the tenant, does qualify since the condo is her legal residence in New York.
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