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Seeing housing as a vehicle for wealth building is what leads to policies that increase or maintain housing prices. People don't need to put their money in to h

Seeing housing as a vehicle for wealth building is what leads to policies that increase or maintain housing prices. People don't need to put their money in to housing to build equity, they can just build equity. You know, save. Put it in diversified assets not chuck it all in to one asset and then leverage debt to chuck even more in to that asset. Home ownership is how the system keeps the common man down. It should absolutely not be championed in his favour.

koolba 7y ago
> People don't need to put their money in to housing to build equity, they can just build equity. You know, save. Put it in diversified assets not chuck it all in to one asset and then leverage debt to chuck even more in to that asset. On paper yes. In practice no. Because the common man will buy a new car, or order some trinket from Amazon, or some other splurge. > Home ownership is how the system keeps the common man down. It should absolutely not be championed in his favour. Home ownership forces the common man to save because he knows he’ll be kicked to the curb if he doesn’t pay the mortgage. If people treated their retirement savings like a true mortgage, e.g. putting it before all other monthly expenses, then yes it’d be possible. But they won’t.
unlinked_dll 7y ago
As a home buyer you aren't making the choice between a diversified set of assets without leverage and one highly leveraged asset. You're spending money for another month of shelter while making the decision to keep it when you've paid for it long enough. A lot of people would love to pump their savings into a diverse portfolio with little debt. Unfortunately we still have to pay rent. Personally if I do the math on it, putting savings into equities to save up for a 20% down payment on a mortgage is by far the most sound plan I can have because it optimizes my returns for my income. And even without talking about returns, in terms of utility I don't want to raise a family in my expensive and tiny apartment - basically I don't want to save up so I can buy a nice house when I retire, I want to buy a nice house to build my life in then sell it when I retire. You've got the incentives completely flipped in my opinion.

koolba 7y ago

> People don't need to put their money in to housing to build equity, they can just build equity. You know, save. Put it in diversified assets not chuck it all in to one asset and then leverage debt to chuck even more in to that asset. On paper yes. In practice no. Because the common man will buy a new car, or order some trinket from Amazon, or some other splurge. > Home ownership is how the system keeps the common man down. It should absolutely not be championed in his favour. Home ownership forces the common man to save because he knows he’ll be kicked to the curb if he doesn’t pay the mortgage. If people treated their retirement savings like a true mortgage, e.g. putting it before all other monthly expenses, then yes it’d be possible. But they won’t.

unlinked_dll 7y ago

As a home buyer you aren't making the choice between a diversified set of assets without leverage and one highly leveraged asset. You're spending money for another month of shelter while making the decision to keep it when you've paid for it long enough. A lot of people would love to pump their savings into a diverse portfolio with little debt. Unfortunately we still have to pay rent. Personally if I do the math on it, putting savings into equities to save up for a 20% down payment on a mortgage is by far the most sound plan I can have because it optimizes my returns for my income. And even without talking about returns, in terms of utility I don't want to raise a family in my expensive and tiny apartment - basically I don't want to save up so I can buy a nice house when I retire, I want to buy a nice house to build my life in then sell it when I retire. You've got the incentives completely flipped in my opinion.