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Property ownership is bad. Rent for life, dont leave inheritance to your children so they can rent for life too. All you need in life is clothing, entertainment

Property ownership is bad. Rent for life, dont leave inheritance to your children so they can rent for life too. All you need in life is clothing, entertainment, a bit of travel to distract you from your tiny living space, maybe a gadget or two and of course onsite work. Oh and praise from you manager to add meaning to your daily grind. Or so “they” say while “they” amass thousands of properties and massive fortunes while we get tagged, farmed in office buildings, monitored and ignored in politics. /Sarcasm Sorry, I am bitter about this because I simply dont buy in to this concept. Owning your own home is, in my view, the first step towards financial freedom. Downvote away but i strongly believe this concept is horrible.

kumarvvr 6y ago
This. I'm from India, and the most important goal for any salaried person in India, is to own a piece of land. Maybe 150 - 200 square yards (decently sized to build a 3 bedroom house). And that land is not seen as an expense, but as an investment. An investment to be handed over to children. And usually, families try to buy about 1 plot of land for each child typically. I think that, no matter where you are in the world, land is an important asset. A place to live, a house to cover your head, reduces a lot of stress in life. In India, there are three things considered first and foremost in life "Roti, Kapda Makaan". Roti - Food Kapda - Clothing Makaaan - House.
- blueblisters 6y ago
  A curious phenomenon I have noticed only in India is that rental yields tend to be much lower than any other country. Arguably, if renting is so cheap, it makes more sense to rent than own a house, unless property is expected to appreciate in value indefinitely.
  - kumarvvr 6y ago
    One reason for less rentals, is the cultural norm of home ownership, which is often seen as a very reliable and solid sign of income stability. Another reason is lack teeth in laws that implement rental agreements. In fact, most owners hardly take any rental agreements or leases.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    Yeah, but one doesn't want to rent because owning a home is an investment ... and that's how we end up with the price :-) This must be great for people who like to move around a lot.
  - kumarvvr 6y ago
    Most homes are purchased for the purpose of living in them. Additionally, monthly rental income is less than a quarter of loan payments, assuming 80% of total is taken as loan, which is true in most cases. Loan tenures are about 25 years, so most families take a home and pay the loans during their active service life. About 10 or 15 years down the line, one or two floors are added to tge house, for rental purpose. Here too, rental is less than half of construction cost. Again, intent is for very long term appreciation of the asset, rather than a passive income source.
    - andrepd 6y ago
      > Most homes are purchased for the purpose of living in them. [citation needed]
      - dslkfjg 6y ago
        The number of people who buy homes to live in them greatly exceeds the number of people who buy homes as investments. That seems obvious to me. The only way most housing could be investment property is if investment vehicles each had so many houses, literally tens or hundreds of thousands, that their total ownership exceeded that of ordinary people . As it turns out, this is not the case: https://www.statista.com/statistics/187576/housing-units-occupied-by-owner-in-the-us-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187576/housing-units-occ...
        pbhjpbhj 6y ago
        Perhaps the parent is suggesting that people might only buy because it's also an investment and would otherwise rent? FTSE100 appears to have doubled in 20 years, my house in a poor UK city has quadrupled in value. Starting wages have increased by about 70%.
      - kumarvvr 6y ago
        I myself am an example, so is everyone in my social circle. edit: Also Myth 5 in the following article. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/et-explains/six-myths-about-buying-a-home-in-india-you-need-to-stop-believing/articleshow/66553020.cms?from=mdr https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/et-explains/six-my... Edit 2: An 1800 sft, duplex house, built in a 150 square yard property, cost about Rs. 13 million. And that is in a city like Hyderabad. Costs about double that in Bangalore, the top IT city in India and probably more in a city like Mumbai & New Delhi. An average salary of an IT employee, with about 10 years of experience is about Rs. 3 million per year. Banks give a loan of about Rs. 10 million on that house, and employees usually source the remaining amount from further loans or high interest borrowings. Cumulatively, with current interest rates (have been stable for a decade now), EMI on a 13 million loan is about 0.13 million per month, meaning more than half of an employees salary, 1.56 million, goes to EMI payments. Average rental value for that property is about Rs. 25000 per month, or Rs. 0.3 million per year. So hardly enough for covering EMI. Tenure on the loan is usually 20 to 30 years. So, for most families, with wife and husband working, owning one house is within reach, but two is beyond capacity. With so much of income going to EMI, most choose to stay in the house rather than rent it out.
RobertoG 6y ago
>>"Owning your own home is, in my view, the first step towards financial freedom." I totally agree. It's obvious to me that home ownership is what allows the existence of a "middle class". That makes it a target for some interests.
chriswarbo 6y ago
I think it's reasonable to argue against (such a heavy emphasis) on home ownership; but it has to apply equally. Everyone striving to own a home is a consistent scenario, which has pros and cons. Social housing that's owned by nobody/everybody is a consistent scenario, which has pros and cons. Having some paying rent to others who own (or, even worse, have buy-to-let mortgages), is inherently unjust.
- chii 6y ago
  > inherently unjust. Why is it inherently unjust? The owner paid to have the building constructed. That took upfront capital. Asking the renter to pay for the use of this capital doesn't sound unjust to me. Is renting out a car you purchased inherently unjust?
  - neilparikh 6y ago
    > The owner paid to have the building constructed. Much of the rent paid in big cities is not for the construction or maintenance costs, but the land value. Did the owner construct the land?
    - chii 6y ago
      > Did the owner construct the land? The land itself had to be acquired somehow. The very first owner paid for an army to take the land from the indigenous population that "owned" it, and that "cost" is a chain that is linked all the way to today (and at every step of the transaction, somebody profits by increasing the price a bit). So either you raise another army today (at an even greater cost) to acquire the land, or you pay the asking price from the current owners.
      - neilparikh 6y ago
        Your initial claim was about the situation being just. This argument explains why and what situation we have, but you've done nothing to explain why it's just. "Raise another army or pay the price" is hardly a ringing endorsement of the fairness of the system. The key thing to note is that this isn't the only model of land ownership possible. There are other that are more fair (land value taxes and community land trusts for example). To be clear, I don't really have anything against individual landowners; it's the system that's unjust.
yosito 6y ago
> Owning your own home is, in my view, the first step towards financial freedom. I don't disagree with you, but owning your own home can also be a step towards financial ruin if you choose the wrong home. I know a few people who bought homes that they ended up losing huge amounts of money on and selling a few years later. Beyond that, it's also a commitment that comes with a huge opportunity cost. If I buy I house in Texas and later there's an opportunity in Oregon, I've got to deal with the house first before I can take the opportunity in Oregon. Lastly, the math doesn't always add up. Sometimes it makes more financial sense to rent (at least temporarily) than to own, but you have to do the math for your own situation.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Personally I feel like buying housing, at least in the UK, makes a lot of sense. However, I have a friend who is currently in that kind of situation where it's certainly made me think twice. She bought a new built flat about 5 years ago in the outskirts of London. Following the Grenfell disaster it has gotten caught up in the inspections for fire safety and is now practically worthless until ~£70k worth of remedial works are carried out. She cannot remortgage it, she can't rent it out and she can't sell it. Pretty nasty scenario.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    Apartments have always been kind of a sucker's deal compared to houses though. Houses in almost any condition can still be worth a ton, because you the owner have complete control over the state of the building on the land (including, knock it down and put a new one in).
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      that because the laws in UK basically turn a apartment ownership into a indentured servitude - you pay 100 years of rent for the privilege of being bound to the place, taking the cost of any remedial works, having no stake in the land and on the hook for ground rent and any feed the management company dreams up In Czech Republic you actually own a share of the whole building and the land it stands on.
dbetteridge 6y ago
I mean the article agrees with you? It primarily talks about the unfairness of the current system, the NIMBY problem reducing housing stock and the issue of regulations intended to curb new building reducing the stock of houses so that only the elite and existing homeowners can afford them. The section on renting/alternatives is mainly just a discussion about alternatives to the current unfair approach and some cases where things work better. That said the situation in most of the western world is insanity, If I want to buy a house in my hometown (Perth, Australia) I need a minimum 5% deposit + 3-5% stamp duty and the median house now costs 500k AUD. Median salary is closer to 75k AUD, so you're looking at a mortgage of roughly 6 salary years and a deposit of at least 50k (if you have good credit and no debts). Edit to add: A 20% deposit is minimum to not have to pay a 'Mortgage insurance' which gets added to your mortgage to cover the bank if you default and is usually equivalent to the difference between your deposit and 20%.
- elric 6y ago
  > a minimum 5% deposit + 3-5% stamp duty Oh wow. I had to read the rest of your comment twice to understand that you were saying these seem high to you. They seemed really low to me. To put it into perspective, you need a 10-20% deposit in Belgium (depending on various factors) and there's a 6% tax for an old house (10% up until very recently) or 21% for a new house. It's basically impossible to buy a house if you're young or single or come from a poor family. I feel your pain.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Is that tax added into the mortgage as a lump sum (meaning you pay interest on it for the life of the loan) or is it added to the payment each month?
    - dbetteridge 6y ago
      Not sure how Belgiums works, but Australias stamp duty is a lump sum you pay alongside your deposit when buying the property. Correction: I double checked and it looks like it can be added to your mortgage, which isn't as bad up front.
jariel 6y ago
I'm down-voting you because you haven't made an argument in the face of the issue. The flaw the assumption is that somehow 'buying' a home that is 15x your annual salary, that takes your entire life to pay off, is some kind of 'freedom'.
- JayPeaEm 6y ago
  Agreed. I think they're only looking at it from a financial freedom point of view. But I, too, don't see a 30-year keeps-with-inflation anchor as freedom.
  - frockington1 6y ago
    What's the alternative? You need a place to live. I guess you can rent but that is constantly increasing and you get 0 equity out of it
- ajxs 6y ago
  What's a reasonable alternative, just pay someone else's mortgage instead? Go live in the woods and opt out of the economy entirely? A mortgage is debt, yes. However the money you put into the mortgage is wealth that you're slowly accruing. If you're just renting a property someone else owns you're not accruing anything at all. No one thinks that taking on a 20-30 year debt is a good thing. People only do it out of necessity.
  - jariel 6y ago
    I'm not offering an alternative, I'm pointing out the OP didn't make an argument, or rather one that wasn't based on any reasoning. "just pay someone else's mortgage instead?" - it has nothing to do with what the owner of the property is doing with their money. If rent is a more viable option, then rent. Ontario, Canada has a soft kind of rent control that works somewhat well for renting, that's an option. Including housing in inflation calculations would be another 'option' because very low interest rates create bubbles. Focusing on affordability in zoning. Taxing rental income. Taxing homes sales over a certain price. Increasing or reducing property taxes. There are a million variables to make the housing situation work better and crude 'own vs. rent' statements without arguments are not going to help.
blacktriangle 6y ago
Welcome to the NWO: "You'll own nothing and like it"
kiba 6y ago
Owning a home as a form of wealth necessarily conflict with affordability. We need to consider one or the other in order to make the best use of land, which are finite. If we choose to make having a home a priority, then we need to choose affordability both so that people are less likely to be homeless and so that people can do other thing with their money.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Not true. A house is a form of wealth because you live there. If you don't own a house you need to rent someplace. If you live in the house long enough you pay it off and live there rent free! The above assumes that you actually pay the house off of course. Many people don't.
  - akomtu 6y ago
    No, you don't get to live in "your" house rent free. About 3% of the house value per year goes to property taxes, repairs, utility bills, grass lawn maintenance, hoa dues, insurance and so on. A paid off house is like a brokerage account with insane fees and liability.
    - jjav 6y ago
      The cost of owning a house needs to always be compared to the alternative. By owning, the principal+interest payment disappears when it is paid off. Sure you continue paying other expenses. If you rent, you pay the full and increasing market rate, forever.
- dslkfjg 6y ago
  If you have been watching California's experiments with homelessness, especially San Fran. you may have learned that homeless people prefer being homeless even when given free accomodations and when i say accomodations I mean nice hotel rooms of their own. This is because homelessness is a side-effect of mental illness and drug addiction. The later is not all drug addiction, ( I used to live next to an "invisible" heroin addict which we only learned about when he OD'd) it's a certain type of disorganized-thinking and lifestyle which some addicts manifest. The cost of housing doesn't cause homelessness; it causes roommates and the conflicts and violence and chaos that imposes on people's lives which is significant if under-studied.
throwaway316943 6y ago
Literally rent seeking, they want to turn the West into Saudi Arabia, essentially a techno-feudalism with debt slavery.
effie 6y ago
What is "financial freedom"? You still have to work, use state currency, pay taxes. Did you mean owning your own home is the first step towards being wealthy?
- willcipriano 6y ago
  Here's what owning my home has meant for me. I live in a high COL area, when I moved out when I was 20 rent was more than half of my income. I'd get raises but my rent would continue to climb. 5 years ago I bought a house, my rent stopped climbing. Now I can't even get a apartment for 125% of my mortgage and that is without a yard, with neighbors a half inch of sheet rock away, and no equity. This means that while yes I still have to work, it isn't the end of the world that I get fired or miss a promotion. I no longer need to push hard to drive up my income like I did when I was in a apartment. So now I have more options, when a PM screws the pooch and misses a requirement I attend my daughters soccer game as planned instead of staying late. If that isn't freedom I don't know what is.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Enough savings that you don't worry about little things. I just had to fix a wheel bearing on my car $700 later (my mechanic replaced the brakes and a few other small things while in the area) - not a large thing, but for many people that is more than they have saved up. There are safety nets for big things - not always good ones, but they exist everywhere and so when something major goes wrong you can count on some help. However there are a lot of little things that are both far more likely to go wrong, and also things that it is harder to get help with from any sort of safety net.
- sumtechguy 6y ago
  I can take a stab at that. I paid off a house a few years ago. My flexibility with work and money went way up. I personally went from 10k CC debt and a house mortgage to well over a million in assets and rotating debt (for points) in a very short period of time. I did not really change my lifestyle at all. I went from planning out how to buy small items (which is normal BTW) to mostly 'do no think too much about it'. Financial freedom was once put to me by an interesting 'when you feel like it' ladder. 1 eat whatever you want 2 buy whatever cloths you like 3 buy nice electronics whenever you feel like it 4 buy a used car with cash 5 buy a nice used car with cash 6 buy a nice new car with cash 7 travel whenever you like, and stay at an OK hotel 8 travel wherever you like, and stay at a nice resort 9 ... I am somewhere between 5 and 6 now. Had a bit of a setback and slid back to 4/5 a few years ago. 5/6 is normal for my point in life I am at with my income. If I had less income that ladder is slower to go up. Also as you go up cash becomes less of 'how do I get more' and more 'how do I use this to buy me time'. My level up to 5/6 only happened because I paid off that house. My setback is because of a choice to move somewhere else. But think about it this way. Whatever your rent/mortgage is. Think of having that amount of extra cash per month. Think how quickly you could use that to level up if you kept a similar lifestyle you have now. Financial freedom is a matter of perspective on how you view material wealth. Some people never feel free because they are always looking to ladder up. Some people are fine at the low levels because they see material wealth as a burden.
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deepstack 6y ago
Upvote! Private property ownership and intergenerational wealth transfer is the foundation of middle class, and bigger middle class leads to better education for the masses, and a more democratic society!
- garduque 6y ago
  Like I tell my wife, we are working to pay off our house (and hopefully another soon) for our kids, not for us. Sure I could rent and maybe there are benefits to that in a short term view, but in a generational view there are huge benefits to my children if I am able to give each of them a house (to live in or sell and buy another, I don't care) and then they are able to make things better for their kids, etc. Add up all the money you have spent on rent and mortgage payments and pretend it just never happened. It's life changing to have that.
- bradlys 6y ago
  Why do people want intergenerational wealth transfer? Anytime we talk about billionaires passing down large sums of money to their children and creating dynasties out of it - it’s a bad thing. Yet, middle class to upper middle class does it and it’s a good thing? I see it as problematic. Keeps the ground unlevel.
  - tallon 6y ago
    I guess it's something you don't understand if you don't want/have kids.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    If you rent your house instead of buying it, it only means that someone else is passing their money to their kids. I mean, ultimately, someone owns the house, even if that person is not you, right? An interesting solution is to decouple the price of the house from the price of the land it stands on, and then the government could rent the land and use that income instead of other taxes. Better description of this idea is here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...
janekm 6y ago
Having to pay >60% of monthly salary on a mortgage for the next 25 years isn't exactly my definition of financial freedom. If the market crashes you have no freedom to move for opportunities elsewhere. Here in London, rent is <50% of mortgage payments on an equivalent property.
- soarfourmore 6y ago
  > Having to pay >60% of monthly salary I moved to a MCOL city where my mortgage is <20%. my salary
- mustyoshi 6y ago
  ”60% monthly salary on a mortgage" I think everyone would agree that that is not financial freedom, but it's commonly accepted and taught that your rent/mortgage shouldn't be more than 30% of your take home.
  - janekm 6y ago
    That was my poorly made point, indeed... It can be more sensible from a financial freedom point of view to rent at 30% of take-home pay than mortgage at 60%.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    for some people that 30% is literally impossible in a major city
- jjk166 6y ago
  Around here a mortgage plus taxes is quite a bit less than rent for a comparable square footage and year of construction. Rent should be more than mortgage as you are paying your landlord's mortgage plus the overhead of renting it out. Even if your landlord has held the property for a long time, they should take out new mortgages and invest the money rather than let it sit idle. There are some markets where the demand to rent is not coupled to the demand to buy, but this highly atypical.
norswap 6y ago
Reminds me of this recent book review on "Georgism", an economic doctrine that states that land ownership is responsible for most of capitalism's evil: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr... Interestingly, Georgism agrees with you: the problem is that since land appreciates in value (as the supply is fixed and demand increases), there is an incentive to hoard it speculatively. George proposes a high land tax to negate land appreciation, and make it so it is only profitable to own land if it is effectively used (to live or to produce on). Having corporations own land instead of individuals is just about the worse compromise that can be made.
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  Georgism has interesting extensions. I see the core point as things that were originally allocated arbitrarily/with force should be taxed highly. If your ancestor was a knight who seized some land by force you should have to compensate the rest of society to keep it. You can extend it to pollution. Polluting is taking some of a common resource (the environment) from everyone else, so polluters should compensate society proportionately. You could even extend it to network effects in tech. If you have users just because you were first and made it hard to leave, that's something unearned you took from society that you should compensate us for. I think this one is more of a stretch and sadly probably wrong.
simonh 6y ago
The problem is not the practice of home ownership, it is the _policy_ of massively subsidising home ownership through regulations and tax breaks, while also isolating it from actual market forces such as by blocking increased supply. The article is specifically arguing against those policies, not home ownership itself. If you want to own property because you believe in free market capitalism that's fine, I happen to also own my own home, but the current home ownership system in much of the West is a government created stitch up. I'm lucky to have benefited from it, but my children will suffer. The 'they' you rail against who are amassing properties as massively subsidised wealth accumulators are exactly who this article is arguing against. Deregulate, open up the markets and let people decide on their investments of choice in a competitive environment. Are you really arguing that?
- StevePerkins 6y ago
  In the United Status, the tax break on mortgage interest was effectively eliminated during the previous administration (by the Republicans, ironically enough). When you file taxes, you can take the "standard deduction" that everyone gets. A downward adjustment to the amount of your income that is taxable. Or you can "itemize" your various tax breaks, if they add up to a total greater than the standard deduction. Historically, home ownership has been "subsidized" in the sense that the interest one pays on mortgage loans is one of the things that can be itemized. And historically, that was usually enough to push you above the standard deduction amount. But now, the standard deduction amount has been raised to such a high level that only the wealthy and very upper-middle class have any reason to itemize anymore. Typical mortgages now are no longer enough to get you any special treatment on taxes, beyond a renter who also takes the standard deduction. Of course, this outdated talking point will probably stick around for years, though...
neilparikh 6y ago
Your comment is a massive strawman of the article. The core problem is that once you have a majority of the population owning an asset, they're incentivized to pull the ladder up behind them, and make it difficult for the non-landed to also buy the asset, to make the value of their asset go up. > Owning your own home is, in my view, the first step towards financial freedom. Sure, for those lucky enough to be able to buy a home before it gets too expensive. What about those not lucky enough to do so? Do they not deserve financial freedom?
- bena 6y ago
  Uh, if I buy a property, yeah, I kind of want to make it difficult for someone else to buy it. Seeing as I seek to own it long enough to live on it. There is nothing about the previous "landed" status of my neighbors that will affect the value of my property. Not to mention, if you're seeking to reside, not speculate, the "value" of the property is kinda immaterial.
  - dionidium 6y ago
    Uh, if I buy a property, yeah, I kind of want to make it difficult for someone else to buy it. Seeing as I seek to own it long enough to live on it. You can make the property you own hard to buy or easy to buy; that's obviously up to you. The problem is that landowners pass laws that make it difficult for prospective owners to buy any property or for current owners to build new units on the land they already own. This is fundamentally illegitimate, but unfortunately it's very popular.
    - bena 6y ago
      I was being cheeky because the way he framed it, it seemed like he was saying that making it difficult for someone to take your property is a bad thing.
  - neilparikh 6y ago
    > There is nothing about the previous "landed" status of my neighbors that will affect the value of my property. Suppose everyone who wanted to had the ability to own land in New York (obviously not possible geometrically, but for sake of argument). Do you think that property in New York would still be worth the same? Land only has a buying price/rent because there is an unmet demand. This is a principle economists realized centuries ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent > Not to mention, if you're seeking to reside, not speculate, the "value" of the property is kinda immaterial. The modern property ownership system basically forces homeowners to be speculators. If you have to pay hundreds of thousands (or even millions!) to buy a home, are you really going to be okay if it takes a massive hit (or doesn't go up in value as much as expected)?
andrepd 6y ago
The fundamental problem is linking "home as a place to live" and "home as an investment". The two things aren't compatible. If you want to buy a place to live so you don't have to work for a Lord, you want affordable housing. If you have a property which you want to be an investment, you want housing prices to baloon. Currently the latter is winning.
- ARandomerDude 6y ago
  Since you know that, go with the market. Sell your house every 2-3 years while it's hot and make money. When things slow down, stay in your house and enjoy it.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  This. Contrary to this article, I think the biggest policy mistake was turning home ownership into an investment/retirement strategy. In the last 10 years, services like AirBnB have only accelerated the problem.
- swiley 6y ago
  You could have both if dense housing was allowed to be built and people bought condos.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    How? If an asset goes up in value then that means someone is paying more for it at the end of the day. Thus, it’s less affordable... If your argument is about splitting up land use by building higher, it still is true. At the end of the day, that land became more expensive and you are less able to purchase the land. Appreciating asset and affordability are opposites by definition.
    - swiley 6y ago
      You're less able to purchase the same size of land but size really isn't that interesting unless you're planning to farm it.
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bluGill 6y ago
Renting and buying can both turn out well depending on your individual circumstances. If you buy you eventually have a house rent free. However if your rent you probably spend less on rent - so invest that difference and you end up with about the same. With real estate "location location location". In some areas there are situations that will make one or the other better. Everybody has their own life goals, and that in turn will feed into what is better for you.
- daemin 6y ago
  One thing people seem to skip over is that once you have bought a house you will still need to pay many fees. Just owning a house isn't free, there will be property taxes, fees for services, and other actions that require money from you. In a lot of cases when renting these are taken care of by the landlord. So just the rent vs mortgage comparison (or rent vs no rent) is misleading at best, downright fraudulent at worst.
  - milkytron 6y ago
    > In a lot of cases when renting these are taken care of by the landlord. The thing is, a landlord isn't likely to continue renting out if they're losing money. Typically, the money for services, maintenance, etc. comes from rent. The renter is indirectly paying for those, otherwise the landlord would be out of business.
    - daemin 6y ago
      Yes, the landlord is paying for those things out of the rent, but as another commenter has stated my point is that you cannot make a direct Rent to Mortgage comparison. As there are many other costs you end up paying as a home owner which you don't worry about when you're a renter.
  - jjav 6y ago
    > In a lot of cases when renting these are taken care of by the landlord. Approximately never are any of those costs taken care of by the landlord! The renter is paying for them, plus a profit margin for the landlord. That's what rent is. The landlord isn't running a charity. Only exception is if you luck into a rental by someone who paid off the property long ago and doesn't care to charge market prices for it.
heliodor 6y ago
Owning your shelter makes sense. The problem starts when people view their homes as financial investments instead of lifestyle security.
mariodiana 6y ago
Plus, when a 100-year pandemic hits and people flee the nearby metropolitan area for your upstate town, waving wads of cash and bidding up prices, and your landlady decides she'd like to get in on the action and put up for sale the house you live in, so on top of all the other stress and uncertainty of living through a 100-year pandemic you can also wonder where you're going to find a new place to live, you'll thank your lucky stars you never made the mistake of becoming a homeowner.
cannabis_sam 6y ago
> Downvote away but i strongly believe this concept is horrible. You are absolutely correct, mate.
ganafagol 6y ago
Inheritance of large wealth like a $1M+ home is the first step to inequality of opportunity in a society. Get as rich as you want, but for the next generation there needs to be a reset (beyond a reasonable threshold), otherwise you just end up with family dynasties. May be fantastic for the involved individuals, but ends horribly for society. Usually with a revolution after a few generations.

kumarvvr 6y ago

This. I'm from India, and the most important goal for any salaried person in India, is to own a piece of land. Maybe 150 - 200 square yards (decently sized to build a 3 bedroom house). And that land is not seen as an expense, but as an investment. An investment to be handed over to children. And usually, families try to buy about 1 plot of land for each child typically. I think that, no matter where you are in the world, land is an important asset. A place to live, a house to cover your head, reduces a lot of stress in life. In India, there are three things considered first and foremost in life "Roti, Kapda Makaan". Roti - Food Kapda - Clothing Makaaan - House.

blueblisters 6y ago
A curious phenomenon I have noticed only in India is that rental yields tend to be much lower than any other country. Arguably, if renting is so cheap, it makes more sense to rent than own a house, unless property is expected to appreciate in value indefinitely.
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  One reason for less rentals, is the cultural norm of home ownership, which is often seen as a very reliable and solid sign of income stability. Another reason is lack teeth in laws that implement rental agreements. In fact, most owners hardly take any rental agreements or leases.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  Yeah, but one doesn't want to rent because owning a home is an investment ... and that's how we end up with the price :-) This must be great for people who like to move around a lot.
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  Most homes are purchased for the purpose of living in them. Additionally, monthly rental income is less than a quarter of loan payments, assuming 80% of total is taken as loan, which is true in most cases. Loan tenures are about 25 years, so most families take a home and pay the loans during their active service life. About 10 or 15 years down the line, one or two floors are added to tge house, for rental purpose. Here too, rental is less than half of construction cost. Again, intent is for very long term appreciation of the asset, rather than a passive income source.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    > Most homes are purchased for the purpose of living in them. [citation needed]
    - dslkfjg 6y ago
      The number of people who buy homes to live in them greatly exceeds the number of people who buy homes as investments. That seems obvious to me. The only way most housing could be investment property is if investment vehicles each had so many houses, literally tens or hundreds of thousands, that their total ownership exceeded that of ordinary people . As it turns out, this is not the case: https://www.statista.com/statistics/187576/housing-units-occupied-by-owner-in-the-us-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187576/housing-units-occ...
      - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
        Perhaps the parent is suggesting that people might only buy because it's also an investment and would otherwise rent? FTSE100 appears to have doubled in 20 years, my house in a poor UK city has quadrupled in value. Starting wages have increased by about 70%.
    - kumarvvr 6y ago
      I myself am an example, so is everyone in my social circle. edit: Also Myth 5 in the following article. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/et-explains/six-myths-about-buying-a-home-in-india-you-need-to-stop-believing/articleshow/66553020.cms?from=mdr https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/et-explains/six-my... Edit 2: An 1800 sft, duplex house, built in a 150 square yard property, cost about Rs. 13 million. And that is in a city like Hyderabad. Costs about double that in Bangalore, the top IT city in India and probably more in a city like Mumbai & New Delhi. An average salary of an IT employee, with about 10 years of experience is about Rs. 3 million per year. Banks give a loan of about Rs. 10 million on that house, and employees usually source the remaining amount from further loans or high interest borrowings. Cumulatively, with current interest rates (have been stable for a decade now), EMI on a 13 million loan is about 0.13 million per month, meaning more than half of an employees salary, 1.56 million, goes to EMI payments. Average rental value for that property is about Rs. 25000 per month, or Rs. 0.3 million per year. So hardly enough for covering EMI. Tenure on the loan is usually 20 to 30 years. So, for most families, with wife and husband working, owning one house is within reach, but two is beyond capacity. With so much of income going to EMI, most choose to stay in the house rather than rent it out.

RobertoG 6y ago

>>"Owning your own home is, in my view, the first step towards financial freedom." I totally agree. It's obvious to me that home ownership is what allows the existence of a "middle class". That makes it a target for some interests.

chriswarbo 6y ago

I think it's reasonable to argue against (such a heavy emphasis) on home ownership; but it has to apply equally. Everyone striving to own a home is a consistent scenario, which has pros and cons. Social housing that's owned by nobody/everybody is a consistent scenario, which has pros and cons. Having some paying rent to others who own (or, even worse, have buy-to-let mortgages), is inherently unjust.

chii 6y ago
> inherently unjust. Why is it inherently unjust? The owner paid to have the building constructed. That took upfront capital. Asking the renter to pay for the use of this capital doesn't sound unjust to me. Is renting out a car you purchased inherently unjust?
- neilparikh 6y ago
  > The owner paid to have the building constructed. Much of the rent paid in big cities is not for the construction or maintenance costs, but the land value. Did the owner construct the land?
  - chii 6y ago
    > Did the owner construct the land? The land itself had to be acquired somehow. The very first owner paid for an army to take the land from the indigenous population that "owned" it, and that "cost" is a chain that is linked all the way to today (and at every step of the transaction, somebody profits by increasing the price a bit). So either you raise another army today (at an even greater cost) to acquire the land, or you pay the asking price from the current owners.
    - neilparikh 6y ago
      Your initial claim was about the situation being just. This argument explains why and what situation we have, but you've done nothing to explain why it's just. "Raise another army or pay the price" is hardly a ringing endorsement of the fairness of the system. The key thing to note is that this isn't the only model of land ownership possible. There are other that are more fair (land value taxes and community land trusts for example). To be clear, I don't really have anything against individual landowners; it's the system that's unjust.

yosito 6y ago

> Owning your own home is, in my view, the first step towards financial freedom. I don't disagree with you, but owning your own home can also be a step towards financial ruin if you choose the wrong home. I know a few people who bought homes that they ended up losing huge amounts of money on and selling a few years later. Beyond that, it's also a commitment that comes with a huge opportunity cost. If I buy I house in Texas and later there's an opportunity in Oregon, I've got to deal with the house first before I can take the opportunity in Oregon. Lastly, the math doesn't always add up. Sometimes it makes more financial sense to rent (at least temporarily) than to own, but you have to do the math for your own situation.

VBprogrammer 6y ago
Personally I feel like buying housing, at least in the UK, makes a lot of sense. However, I have a friend who is currently in that kind of situation where it's certainly made me think twice. She bought a new built flat about 5 years ago in the outskirts of London. Following the Grenfell disaster it has gotten caught up in the inspections for fire safety and is now practically worthless until ~£70k worth of remedial works are carried out. She cannot remortgage it, she can't rent it out and she can't sell it. Pretty nasty scenario.
- XorNot 6y ago
  Apartments have always been kind of a sucker's deal compared to houses though. Houses in almost any condition can still be worth a ton, because you the owner have complete control over the state of the building on the land (including, knock it down and put a new one in).
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    that because the laws in UK basically turn a apartment ownership into a indentured servitude - you pay 100 years of rent for the privilege of being bound to the place, taking the cost of any remedial works, having no stake in the land and on the hook for ground rent and any feed the management company dreams up In Czech Republic you actually own a share of the whole building and the land it stands on.

dbetteridge 6y ago

I mean the article agrees with you? It primarily talks about the unfairness of the current system, the NIMBY problem reducing housing stock and the issue of regulations intended to curb new building reducing the stock of houses so that only the elite and existing homeowners can afford them. The section on renting/alternatives is mainly just a discussion about alternatives to the current unfair approach and some cases where things work better. That said the situation in most of the western world is insanity, If I want to buy a house in my hometown (Perth, Australia) I need a minimum 5% deposit + 3-5% stamp duty and the median house now costs 500k AUD. Median salary is closer to 75k AUD, so you're looking at a mortgage of roughly 6 salary years and a deposit of at least 50k (if you have good credit and no debts). Edit to add: A 20% deposit is minimum to not have to pay a 'Mortgage insurance' which gets added to your mortgage to cover the bank if you default and is usually equivalent to the difference between your deposit and 20%.

elric 6y ago
> a minimum 5% deposit + 3-5% stamp duty Oh wow. I had to read the rest of your comment twice to understand that you were saying these seem high to you. They seemed really low to me. To put it into perspective, you need a 10-20% deposit in Belgium (depending on various factors) and there's a 6% tax for an old house (10% up until very recently) or 21% for a new house. It's basically impossible to buy a house if you're young or single or come from a poor family. I feel your pain.
- pc86 6y ago
  Is that tax added into the mortgage as a lump sum (meaning you pay interest on it for the life of the loan) or is it added to the payment each month?
  - dbetteridge 6y ago
    Not sure how Belgiums works, but Australias stamp duty is a lump sum you pay alongside your deposit when buying the property. Correction: I double checked and it looks like it can be added to your mortgage, which isn't as bad up front.

jariel 6y ago

I'm down-voting you because you haven't made an argument in the face of the issue. The flaw the assumption is that somehow 'buying' a home that is 15x your annual salary, that takes your entire life to pay off, is some kind of 'freedom'.

JayPeaEm 6y ago
Agreed. I think they're only looking at it from a financial freedom point of view. But I, too, don't see a 30-year keeps-with-inflation anchor as freedom.
- frockington1 6y ago
  What's the alternative? You need a place to live. I guess you can rent but that is constantly increasing and you get 0 equity out of it
ajxs 6y ago
What's a reasonable alternative, just pay someone else's mortgage instead? Go live in the woods and opt out of the economy entirely? A mortgage is debt, yes. However the money you put into the mortgage is wealth that you're slowly accruing. If you're just renting a property someone else owns you're not accruing anything at all. No one thinks that taking on a 20-30 year debt is a good thing. People only do it out of necessity.
- jariel 6y ago
  I'm not offering an alternative, I'm pointing out the OP didn't make an argument, or rather one that wasn't based on any reasoning. "just pay someone else's mortgage instead?" - it has nothing to do with what the owner of the property is doing with their money. If rent is a more viable option, then rent. Ontario, Canada has a soft kind of rent control that works somewhat well for renting, that's an option. Including housing in inflation calculations would be another 'option' because very low interest rates create bubbles. Focusing on affordability in zoning. Taxing rental income. Taxing homes sales over a certain price. Increasing or reducing property taxes. There are a million variables to make the housing situation work better and crude 'own vs. rent' statements without arguments are not going to help.

blacktriangle 6y ago

Welcome to the NWO: "You'll own nothing and like it"

kiba 6y ago

Owning a home as a form of wealth necessarily conflict with affordability. We need to consider one or the other in order to make the best use of land, which are finite. If we choose to make having a home a priority, then we need to choose affordability both so that people are less likely to be homeless and so that people can do other thing with their money.

bluGill 6y ago
Not true. A house is a form of wealth because you live there. If you don't own a house you need to rent someplace. If you live in the house long enough you pay it off and live there rent free! The above assumes that you actually pay the house off of course. Many people don't.
- akomtu 6y ago
  No, you don't get to live in "your" house rent free. About 3% of the house value per year goes to property taxes, repairs, utility bills, grass lawn maintenance, hoa dues, insurance and so on. A paid off house is like a brokerage account with insane fees and liability.
  - jjav 6y ago
    The cost of owning a house needs to always be compared to the alternative. By owning, the principal+interest payment disappears when it is paid off. Sure you continue paying other expenses. If you rent, you pay the full and increasing market rate, forever.
dslkfjg 6y ago
If you have been watching California's experiments with homelessness, especially San Fran. you may have learned that homeless people prefer being homeless even when given free accomodations and when i say accomodations I mean nice hotel rooms of their own. This is because homelessness is a side-effect of mental illness and drug addiction. The later is not all drug addiction, ( I used to live next to an "invisible" heroin addict which we only learned about when he OD'd) it's a certain type of disorganized-thinking and lifestyle which some addicts manifest. The cost of housing doesn't cause homelessness; it causes roommates and the conflicts and violence and chaos that imposes on people's lives which is significant if under-studied.

throwaway316943 6y ago

Literally rent seeking, they want to turn the West into Saudi Arabia, essentially a techno-feudalism with debt slavery.

effie 6y ago

What is "financial freedom"? You still have to work, use state currency, pay taxes. Did you mean owning your own home is the first step towards being wealthy?

willcipriano 6y ago
Here's what owning my home has meant for me. I live in a high COL area, when I moved out when I was 20 rent was more than half of my income. I'd get raises but my rent would continue to climb. 5 years ago I bought a house, my rent stopped climbing. Now I can't even get a apartment for 125% of my mortgage and that is without a yard, with neighbors a half inch of sheet rock away, and no equity. This means that while yes I still have to work, it isn't the end of the world that I get fired or miss a promotion. I no longer need to push hard to drive up my income like I did when I was in a apartment. So now I have more options, when a PM screws the pooch and misses a requirement I attend my daughters soccer game as planned instead of staying late. If that isn't freedom I don't know what is.
bluGill 6y ago
Enough savings that you don't worry about little things. I just had to fix a wheel bearing on my car $700 later (my mechanic replaced the brakes and a few other small things while in the area) - not a large thing, but for many people that is more than they have saved up. There are safety nets for big things - not always good ones, but they exist everywhere and so when something major goes wrong you can count on some help. However there are a lot of little things that are both far more likely to go wrong, and also things that it is harder to get help with from any sort of safety net.
sumtechguy 6y ago
I can take a stab at that. I paid off a house a few years ago. My flexibility with work and money went way up. I personally went from 10k CC debt and a house mortgage to well over a million in assets and rotating debt (for points) in a very short period of time. I did not really change my lifestyle at all. I went from planning out how to buy small items (which is normal BTW) to mostly 'do no think too much about it'. Financial freedom was once put to me by an interesting 'when you feel like it' ladder. 1 eat whatever you want 2 buy whatever cloths you like 3 buy nice electronics whenever you feel like it 4 buy a used car with cash 5 buy a nice used car with cash 6 buy a nice new car with cash 7 travel whenever you like, and stay at an OK hotel 8 travel wherever you like, and stay at a nice resort 9 ... I am somewhere between 5 and 6 now. Had a bit of a setback and slid back to 4/5 a few years ago. 5/6 is normal for my point in life I am at with my income. If I had less income that ladder is slower to go up. Also as you go up cash becomes less of 'how do I get more' and more 'how do I use this to buy me time'. My level up to 5/6 only happened because I paid off that house. My setback is because of a choice to move somewhere else. But think about it this way. Whatever your rent/mortgage is. Think of having that amount of extra cash per month. Think how quickly you could use that to level up if you kept a similar lifestyle you have now. Financial freedom is a matter of perspective on how you view material wealth. Some people never feel free because they are always looking to ladder up. Some people are fine at the low levels because they see material wealth as a burden.

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deepstack 6y ago

Upvote! Private property ownership and intergenerational wealth transfer is the foundation of middle class, and bigger middle class leads to better education for the masses, and a more democratic society!

garduque 6y ago
Like I tell my wife, we are working to pay off our house (and hopefully another soon) for our kids, not for us. Sure I could rent and maybe there are benefits to that in a short term view, but in a generational view there are huge benefits to my children if I am able to give each of them a house (to live in or sell and buy another, I don't care) and then they are able to make things better for their kids, etc. Add up all the money you have spent on rent and mortgage payments and pretend it just never happened. It's life changing to have that.
bradlys 6y ago
Why do people want intergenerational wealth transfer? Anytime we talk about billionaires passing down large sums of money to their children and creating dynasties out of it - it’s a bad thing. Yet, middle class to upper middle class does it and it’s a good thing? I see it as problematic. Keeps the ground unlevel.
- tallon 6y ago
  I guess it's something you don't understand if you don't want/have kids.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  If you rent your house instead of buying it, it only means that someone else is passing their money to their kids. I mean, ultimately, someone owns the house, even if that person is not you, right? An interesting solution is to decouple the price of the house from the price of the land it stands on, and then the government could rent the land and use that income instead of other taxes. Better description of this idea is here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...

janekm 6y ago

Having to pay >60% of monthly salary on a mortgage for the next 25 years isn't exactly my definition of financial freedom. If the market crashes you have no freedom to move for opportunities elsewhere. Here in London, rent is <50% of mortgage payments on an equivalent property.

soarfourmore 6y ago
> Having to pay >60% of monthly salary I moved to a MCOL city where my mortgage is <20%. my salary
mustyoshi 6y ago
”60% monthly salary on a mortgage" I think everyone would agree that that is not financial freedom, but it's commonly accepted and taught that your rent/mortgage shouldn't be more than 30% of your take home.
- janekm 6y ago
  That was my poorly made point, indeed... It can be more sensible from a financial freedom point of view to rent at 30% of take-home pay than mortgage at 60%.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  for some people that 30% is literally impossible in a major city
jjk166 6y ago
Around here a mortgage plus taxes is quite a bit less than rent for a comparable square footage and year of construction. Rent should be more than mortgage as you are paying your landlord's mortgage plus the overhead of renting it out. Even if your landlord has held the property for a long time, they should take out new mortgages and invest the money rather than let it sit idle. There are some markets where the demand to rent is not coupled to the demand to buy, but this highly atypical.

norswap 6y ago

Reminds me of this recent book review on "Georgism", an economic doctrine that states that land ownership is responsible for most of capitalism's evil: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr... Interestingly, Georgism agrees with you: the problem is that since land appreciates in value (as the supply is fixed and demand increases), there is an incentive to hoard it speculatively. George proposes a high land tax to negate land appreciation, and make it so it is only profitable to own land if it is effectively used (to live or to produce on). Having corporations own land instead of individuals is just about the worse compromise that can be made.

iudqnolq 6y ago
Georgism has interesting extensions. I see the core point as things that were originally allocated arbitrarily/with force should be taxed highly. If your ancestor was a knight who seized some land by force you should have to compensate the rest of society to keep it. You can extend it to pollution. Polluting is taking some of a common resource (the environment) from everyone else, so polluters should compensate society proportionately. You could even extend it to network effects in tech. If you have users just because you were first and made it hard to leave, that's something unearned you took from society that you should compensate us for. I think this one is more of a stretch and sadly probably wrong.

simonh 6y ago

The problem is not the practice of home ownership, it is the _policy_ of massively subsidising home ownership through regulations and tax breaks, while also isolating it from actual market forces such as by blocking increased supply. The article is specifically arguing against those policies, not home ownership itself. If you want to own property because you believe in free market capitalism that's fine, I happen to also own my own home, but the current home ownership system in much of the West is a government created stitch up. I'm lucky to have benefited from it, but my children will suffer. The 'they' you rail against who are amassing properties as massively subsidised wealth accumulators are exactly who this article is arguing against. Deregulate, open up the markets and let people decide on their investments of choice in a competitive environment. Are you really arguing that?

StevePerkins 6y ago
In the United Status, the tax break on mortgage interest was effectively eliminated during the previous administration (by the Republicans, ironically enough). When you file taxes, you can take the "standard deduction" that everyone gets. A downward adjustment to the amount of your income that is taxable. Or you can "itemize" your various tax breaks, if they add up to a total greater than the standard deduction. Historically, home ownership has been "subsidized" in the sense that the interest one pays on mortgage loans is one of the things that can be itemized. And historically, that was usually enough to push you above the standard deduction amount. But now, the standard deduction amount has been raised to such a high level that only the wealthy and very upper-middle class have any reason to itemize anymore. Typical mortgages now are no longer enough to get you any special treatment on taxes, beyond a renter who also takes the standard deduction. Of course, this outdated talking point will probably stick around for years, though...

neilparikh 6y ago

Your comment is a massive strawman of the article. The core problem is that once you have a majority of the population owning an asset, they're incentivized to pull the ladder up behind them, and make it difficult for the non-landed to also buy the asset, to make the value of their asset go up. > Owning your own home is, in my view, the first step towards financial freedom. Sure, for those lucky enough to be able to buy a home before it gets too expensive. What about those not lucky enough to do so? Do they not deserve financial freedom?

bena 6y ago
Uh, if I buy a property, yeah, I kind of want to make it difficult for someone else to buy it. Seeing as I seek to own it long enough to live on it. There is nothing about the previous "landed" status of my neighbors that will affect the value of my property. Not to mention, if you're seeking to reside, not speculate, the "value" of the property is kinda immaterial.
- dionidium 6y ago
  Uh, if I buy a property, yeah, I kind of want to make it difficult for someone else to buy it. Seeing as I seek to own it long enough to live on it. You can make the property you own hard to buy or easy to buy; that's obviously up to you. The problem is that landowners pass laws that make it difficult for prospective owners to buy any property or for current owners to build new units on the land they already own. This is fundamentally illegitimate, but unfortunately it's very popular.
  - bena 6y ago
    I was being cheeky because the way he framed it, it seemed like he was saying that making it difficult for someone to take your property is a bad thing.
- neilparikh 6y ago
  > There is nothing about the previous "landed" status of my neighbors that will affect the value of my property. Suppose everyone who wanted to had the ability to own land in New York (obviously not possible geometrically, but for sake of argument). Do you think that property in New York would still be worth the same? Land only has a buying price/rent because there is an unmet demand. This is a principle economists realized centuries ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent > Not to mention, if you're seeking to reside, not speculate, the "value" of the property is kinda immaterial. The modern property ownership system basically forces homeowners to be speculators. If you have to pay hundreds of thousands (or even millions!) to buy a home, are you really going to be okay if it takes a massive hit (or doesn't go up in value as much as expected)?

andrepd 6y ago

The fundamental problem is linking "home as a place to live" and "home as an investment". The two things aren't compatible. If you want to buy a place to live so you don't have to work for a Lord, you want affordable housing. If you have a property which you want to be an investment, you want housing prices to baloon. Currently the latter is winning.

ARandomerDude 6y ago
Since you know that, go with the market. Sell your house every 2-3 years while it's hot and make money. When things slow down, stay in your house and enjoy it.
AlexandrB 6y ago
This. Contrary to this article, I think the biggest policy mistake was turning home ownership into an investment/retirement strategy. In the last 10 years, services like AirBnB have only accelerated the problem.
swiley 6y ago
You could have both if dense housing was allowed to be built and people bought condos.
- bradlys 6y ago
  How? If an asset goes up in value then that means someone is paying more for it at the end of the day. Thus, it’s less affordable... If your argument is about splitting up land use by building higher, it still is true. At the end of the day, that land became more expensive and you are less able to purchase the land. Appreciating asset and affordability are opposites by definition.
  - swiley 6y ago
    You're less able to purchase the same size of land but size really isn't that interesting unless you're planning to farm it.
- 6y ago

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bluGill 6y ago

Renting and buying can both turn out well depending on your individual circumstances. If you buy you eventually have a house rent free. However if your rent you probably spend less on rent - so invest that difference and you end up with about the same. With real estate "location location location". In some areas there are situations that will make one or the other better. Everybody has their own life goals, and that in turn will feed into what is better for you.

daemin 6y ago
One thing people seem to skip over is that once you have bought a house you will still need to pay many fees. Just owning a house isn't free, there will be property taxes, fees for services, and other actions that require money from you. In a lot of cases when renting these are taken care of by the landlord. So just the rent vs mortgage comparison (or rent vs no rent) is misleading at best, downright fraudulent at worst.
- milkytron 6y ago
  > In a lot of cases when renting these are taken care of by the landlord. The thing is, a landlord isn't likely to continue renting out if they're losing money. Typically, the money for services, maintenance, etc. comes from rent. The renter is indirectly paying for those, otherwise the landlord would be out of business.
  - daemin 6y ago
    Yes, the landlord is paying for those things out of the rent, but as another commenter has stated my point is that you cannot make a direct Rent to Mortgage comparison. As there are many other costs you end up paying as a home owner which you don't worry about when you're a renter.
- jjav 6y ago
  > In a lot of cases when renting these are taken care of by the landlord. Approximately never are any of those costs taken care of by the landlord! The renter is paying for them, plus a profit margin for the landlord. That's what rent is. The landlord isn't running a charity. Only exception is if you luck into a rental by someone who paid off the property long ago and doesn't care to charge market prices for it.

heliodor 6y ago

Owning your shelter makes sense. The problem starts when people view their homes as financial investments instead of lifestyle security.

mariodiana 6y ago

Plus, when a 100-year pandemic hits and people flee the nearby metropolitan area for your upstate town, waving wads of cash and bidding up prices, and your landlady decides she'd like to get in on the action and put up for sale the house you live in, so on top of all the other stress and uncertainty of living through a 100-year pandemic you can also wonder where you're going to find a new place to live, you'll thank your lucky stars you never made the mistake of becoming a homeowner.

cannabis_sam 6y ago

> Downvote away but i strongly believe this concept is horrible. You are absolutely correct, mate.

ganafagol 6y ago

Inheritance of large wealth like a $1M+ home is the first step to inequality of opportunity in a society. Get as rich as you want, but for the next generation there needs to be a reset (beyond a reasonable threshold), otherwise you just end up with family dynasties. May be fantastic for the involved individuals, but ends horribly for society. Usually with a revolution after a few generations.