>Quite the opposite of what some comments here suggest, encouraging home ownership keeps life affordable. It is one way to stave off an oligarchy of property ow

>Quite the opposite of what some comments here suggest, encouraging home ownership keeps life affordable. It is one way to stave off an oligarchy of property owners. A better way would be to ensure that supply can continue to increase with demand, rather than encourage speculative buying and holding of land off the market in the hopes of making a fortune flipping it to the next generation and slowing down any attempt to redevelop. "Oh at least you're locked in" is at best a patch. >See, for example, Fannie Mae's mission, Yes, that's what they say but that translates into making housing an investment, which (see the several other comments on this point) goes directly contrary to it being affordable. I don't see what's better about mom-and-pops milking the next generation rather than a big conglomerate -- the result is the same. >Finance people who make loans take issue with this since they have to match prices with a "government-backed" business, although it's only a charter which isn't the same as govt-backed. Plus, tons of businesses were supported by government in 2008 and 2020-2021 so that point is moot. Wait, what? Finance people love Fannie Mae and the like because it means they can dump mortgages on a government agency merely because they meet some ossified standard rather than being legitimately below risk thresholds by a realistic assessment. And then not have to worry about fixing a rate that's too low for 30 years.