4 ms·

Almost 40% of homes in America are owned free and clear (no mortgage). https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nearly-40-of-homes-in-the-us-are

by _wldu 6y ago

Almost 40% of homes in America are owned free and clear (no mortgage). https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nearly-40-of-homes-in-the-us-are-free-and-clear-of-a-mortgage/#1ff0b48947c2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nea...

dopamean 6y ago
I wonder how many of those are occupied by renters.
- _wldu 6y ago
  I'm not sure. I posted that to point out the danger of these statistics. We have to be careful. People can tell whatever kind of story they want to tell (at either extreme) and cite the same statistics. Mark Twain made this quip widely known, and it is relevant: "Lies. Damned Lies. And statistics"
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Benjamin Disraeli made it famous; he said it first. Mark Twain made it famous with Americans.
    - thesteamboat 6y ago
      This is probably wrong. Quoting from the wikipedia article on this phrase: > The phrase derives from the full sentence, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."; > it was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain and others, who mistakenly attributed it to the British prime > minister Benjamin Disraeli. The phrase is not found in any of Disraeli's works and the earliest known appearances were > years after his death. The phrase was attributed to an anonymous writer in mid-1891 and later that year to Sir > Charles Dilke, but several others have been listed as originators of the quote, including frequent erroneous > attribution to Twain himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_damned_lies%2C_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_damned_lies%2C_and_sta...
    - singlow 6y ago
      If Disraeli made it famous, why doesn't anyone have any idea when or where he said it? When Twain first used it, he indicated that it was a phrase attributed to Disraeli by some, but in a way that made it sound like Twain knew that not to be true. There is no evidence Disraeli ever said it and its first appearance in history is after Disraeli's death.
mjayhn 6y ago
I'm not sure what you're trying to really portend here but this is a huge, huge part of that article considering it's almost the entirety of the current working class parents; Sixty-eight percent of adults 70 and older are mortgage-free, while 15.9% of Millennials are free and clear of mortgage payments. I'm in my mid-30s and I hardly have any friends that own houses and if they do they're tech workers with decades left on their loans.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Purchasing homes in low CoL areas is much easier.
  - mjayhn 6y ago
    I started my career in 2008. Millennials had to go where the jobs where, and they weren't in low COL areas. Hopefully covid opens up the market for far more remote work. I'm remote now, finally, but in a high COL area, which feels especially dumb now that I'm locked inside.
paulmd 6y ago
>Almost 40% of homes in America are owned free and clear (no mortgage). looking merely at owned homes is ignoring everybody that rents. Renters falling behind on their rent are equally likely to be evicted as soon as the moratoriums are listed. (and that in fact goes to my point about "your rent/mortgage is someone else's asset", a renter who's not making mortgage payments is probably still putting someone else's mortgage in the red and causing havoc in the rest of the financial system. I don't personally shed too much of a tier for the personal finances of highly overleveraged landlords doing the BRRRR type bullshit, it's been screwing up pricing for renters for a decade now, but it's a problem for the rest of the financial system too.) BRRRR: https://investfourmore.com/brrrr-method/ https://investfourmore.com/brrrr-method/ Also, as another poster mentioned, the demographics of home ownership tilt very differently. Lots of boomers own their homes, in many cases free and clear. The numbers for people in their 30s (let alone 20s) are pretty low these days, so your statistic basically ignores everyone under 50. (And in fact even if we got younger people into homes, the same wealth transfer that boomers enjoyed probably cannot be replicated - it was artificially created by lowering interest rates from the highs of 19% in the 70s/80s down to basically 0% now, allowing people to finance much larger amounts of money and causing the underlying asset values to soar. Nor would it be desirable to do so.) And in general I disagree with your comment further down in the thread about "you can say anything with statistics". The obvious thrust of that argument is: gee, I guess we better just not use statistics and argue about feelings instead. That's so much better. It's pretty much an argument made by people whose positions can't be justified by actual data - they don't reconsider their positions, they just want to stop looking at the data.
- _wldu 6y ago
  The point is that many statistics are worse than 'damned lies' because they are made-up to prove a point. It's like a tobacco company paying for research that shows nicotine is not addictive in 66% of people tested. I just made that up as an example. It's not true. So before you can have any faith in stats, you have to know the source and how the research was funded and by whom (this is before we even begin to talk about methodology flaws). If you do not know that then you cannot trust the stats at all. They are indeed worse than damned lies.

by _wldu 6y ago

dopamean 6y ago

I wonder how many of those are occupied by renters.

_wldu 6y ago
I'm not sure. I posted that to point out the danger of these statistics. We have to be careful. People can tell whatever kind of story they want to tell (at either extreme) and cite the same statistics. Mark Twain made this quip widely known, and it is relevant: "Lies. Damned Lies. And statistics"
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Benjamin Disraeli made it famous; he said it first. Mark Twain made it famous with Americans.
  - thesteamboat 6y ago
    This is probably wrong. Quoting from the wikipedia article on this phrase: > The phrase derives from the full sentence, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."; > it was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain and others, who mistakenly attributed it to the British prime > minister Benjamin Disraeli. The phrase is not found in any of Disraeli's works and the earliest known appearances were > years after his death. The phrase was attributed to an anonymous writer in mid-1891 and later that year to Sir > Charles Dilke, but several others have been listed as originators of the quote, including frequent erroneous > attribution to Twain himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_damned_lies%2C_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_damned_lies%2C_and_sta...
  - singlow 6y ago
    If Disraeli made it famous, why doesn't anyone have any idea when or where he said it? When Twain first used it, he indicated that it was a phrase attributed to Disraeli by some, but in a way that made it sound like Twain knew that not to be true. There is no evidence Disraeli ever said it and its first appearance in history is after Disraeli's death.

mjayhn 6y ago

I'm not sure what you're trying to really portend here but this is a huge, huge part of that article considering it's almost the entirety of the current working class parents; Sixty-eight percent of adults 70 and older are mortgage-free, while 15.9% of Millennials are free and clear of mortgage payments. I'm in my mid-30s and I hardly have any friends that own houses and if they do they're tech workers with decades left on their loans.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Purchasing homes in low CoL areas is much easier.
- mjayhn 6y ago
  I started my career in 2008. Millennials had to go where the jobs where, and they weren't in low COL areas. Hopefully covid opens up the market for far more remote work. I'm remote now, finally, but in a high COL area, which feels especially dumb now that I'm locked inside.

paulmd 6y ago

>Almost 40% of homes in America are owned free and clear (no mortgage). looking merely at owned homes is ignoring everybody that rents. Renters falling behind on their rent are equally likely to be evicted as soon as the moratoriums are listed. (and that in fact goes to my point about "your rent/mortgage is someone else's asset", a renter who's not making mortgage payments is probably still putting someone else's mortgage in the red and causing havoc in the rest of the financial system. I don't personally shed too much of a tier for the personal finances of highly overleveraged landlords doing the BRRRR type bullshit, it's been screwing up pricing for renters for a decade now, but it's a problem for the rest of the financial system too.) BRRRR: https://investfourmore.com/brrrr-method/ https://investfourmore.com/brrrr-method/ Also, as another poster mentioned, the demographics of home ownership tilt very differently. Lots of boomers own their homes, in many cases free and clear. The numbers for people in their 30s (let alone 20s) are pretty low these days, so your statistic basically ignores everyone under 50. (And in fact even if we got younger people into homes, the same wealth transfer that boomers enjoyed probably cannot be replicated - it was artificially created by lowering interest rates from the highs of 19% in the 70s/80s down to basically 0% now, allowing people to finance much larger amounts of money and causing the underlying asset values to soar. Nor would it be desirable to do so.) And in general I disagree with your comment further down in the thread about "you can say anything with statistics". The obvious thrust of that argument is: gee, I guess we better just not use statistics and argue about feelings instead. That's so much better. It's pretty much an argument made by people whose positions can't be justified by actual data - they don't reconsider their positions, they just want to stop looking at the data.

_wldu 6y ago
The point is that many statistics are worse than 'damned lies' because they are made-up to prove a point. It's like a tobacco company paying for research that shows nicotine is not addictive in 66% of people tested. I just made that up as an example. It's not true. So before you can have any faith in stats, you have to know the source and how the research was funded and by whom (this is before we even begin to talk about methodology flaws). If you do not know that then you cannot trust the stats at all. They are indeed worse than damned lies.