5 ms·

> It's too difficult to curb demand for things like food and housing if the population is growing. It's also difficult (impossible) to curb demand for housing

by mjr00 4y ago

> It's too difficult to curb demand for things like food and housing if the population is growing. It's also difficult (impossible) to curb demand for housing if housing is far and away the best investment you can possibly make, both in the short, medium, and long-term. Unfortunately, so many people in the west have their net worth tied up in their homes that policies directly targeting property values is political suicide. The best case scenario at this point for our future society is interest rate hikes causing a housing crash, then while prices are in the dumpster, put in legislation that prohibits the behaviours that have contributed to this cycle of housing mania: AirBNB/individual landlords, corporate investment in housing a la BlackRock, etc.

pbk1 4y ago
> if housing is far and away the best investment you can possibly make, both in the short, medium, and long-term. citation needed? genuinely curious - are there studies about long-term returns from housing vs. other asset classes (namely public equities)?
- bradfa 4y ago
  Local to me, real estate investment really only works if you're a landlord and the rent is your income. Buying then selling or flipping homes has not historically been a profitable endeavor. If you timed things just right for COVID, maybe you made a good return, but otherwise in history prices have been rather stable and increasing only similar to inflation for decades. Surely there are markets where flipping houses is extremely profitable, but it's not all markets.
- saurik 4y ago
  I did a Google search for "long-term returns from housing vs. other asset classes" (purposefully using exactly what you typed here to show how easy this is) and found a ton of references showing this is an overly-strong (and even somewhat "debated") claim but (as far as I am concerned) right enough for a discussion forum (and remember a lot of people aren't in a good mental position to own stocks but have to live somewhere anyway and so might as well own a house). https://seekingalpha.com/article/4242070-in-long-run-house-wins https://seekingalpha.com/article/4242070-in-long-run-house-w... > This mix of comparable returns (Finding 1) with lower volatility (Finding 2) leads to one of the research's most puzzling, but fascinating, discoveries: over the very long run (circa the last century), housing earned a superior risk-adjusted return than equities. Sharpe ratios for the asset summarise this fact; note too that the pattern is consistent across countries.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- thaeli 4y ago
  Owner-occupied is kind of a special case, too, because you've got to live somewhere. You could be paying $X to rent, or $X+Y as a mortgage plus upkeep, so the additional "investment" you're making is just $Y. In some cases rents are so high that, especially if you stay in one place a long time, you're actually paying $X-Y to own, so there's a positive return every month in addition to the equity you're accruing. Yeah, this is a horribly broken system, but it does seem to be how things work.
- lisper 4y ago
  No, there aren't, because it isn't true. Residential real estate underperforms equities [1]. [1] https://jai.pm-research.com/content/23/2/111 https://jai.pm-research.com/content/23/2/111
  - abigail95 4y ago
    Does this account for the subsidy, tax advantages and leverage available in real estate vs equities?
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  My understanding is that it shakes out to a couple of things: 1) while not beating the S&P, historical returns on real estate are pretty good and less volatile 2) There are a number of significant tax advantages to home ownership 3) you can't live inside a stock. Building equity instead of paying rent is a good thing 4) you can rent it out, making it pay for itself while accruing value as long as you are willing to add your own labor It's hard to put that all into a chart since (2) and (3), and (4) are personalized and partially mutually exclusive and the tax landscape is always changing.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > Building equity instead of paying rent is a good thing That depends heavily on your goals. I hear this a lot, but it always reads to me like people think equity just magically happens when you buy a home (with a mortgage). No, you have to put money into it monthly, and a portion of that goes to pay of principal, which builds equity. Whether or not putting that money into a large, fixed, illiquid asset (versus stocks/bonds) is a good idea... well, it depends. Personally, if I could get an interest-only mortgage with a reasonable interest rate (for my primary home), I would probably go for it. I personally don't care all that much about building equity, and I'd rather free up that cash for other investments. Of course, many people would use the option of an interest-only mortgage in order to buy even more house than they can afford, instead of for the purposes of freeing up cash, and then end up in dire financial straits, as we saw in the 00s. Also, re: paying rent vs. building equity: yes, I do have a larger space than when I was renting, but I am also paying more than my last rent, in property tax + mortgage interest + HOA dues. That's money that's just as equivalently "thrown away" as if I was just renting. I don't regret this decision, but let's not pretend that renting is throwing away money, and owning is perfect use of money.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      Mortgage is the only type of leverage that an average Joe can get cheaply. Any attempt at getting a 'normal' loan will be met with insane interest rate. That's the main reason why housing market is what it is.
- beiller 4y ago
  There is a lot of research suggesting that housing is not the best investment compared to equities. Many people conflate leverage with real-estate investment. If you apply the same leverage to equities they will far and away outperform real-estate. Try S and P 500 calculator with dividend reinvestment to get an idea. In my opinion, if real-estate out-paces equities or other forms of investment, then we barrel towards a world where no one can afford to save for shelter any more which doesn't make sense, but that's just my opinion. Unfortunately, real-estate is still a profitable investment, and small piddly fed rate hikes won't change that any time soon.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > There is a lot of research suggesting that housing is not the best investment compared to equities. And yet most retail investors loose money. My family managed to lose money both by investing in bonds and by investing in index fund - quite of an achievement. They never lost money in real estate. The reason should be obvious -> most people understand what is a house and how it works, they understand the city they live in and good VS bad areas. Most people don't udnerstand the stock market.
Victerius 4y ago
> It's also difficult (impossible) to curb demand for housing if housing is far and away the best investment you can possibly make, both in the short, medium, and long-term. Rapid population decline. The coronavirus helped in this regard.
- honkler 4y ago
  not when you want to import the rest of the world. I mean immigration, ofcourse. Now before downvoting, understand that exactly this has been the strategy of canadian government to keep property prices up.
  - alephxyz 4y ago
    To keep property prices up or to deal with an aging population / lack of manual labor?
goatcode 4y ago
The sad thing is that individual landlords are among the most responsive to tenant needs, while corporate landlords often are sons of Hell who should be Thanos-snapped out of existence.
- mjr00 4y ago
  > The sad thing is that individual landlords are among the most responsive to tenant needs, This is extremely dependent on a lot of factors. When you are an upper-middle class tech worker renting a luxury condo, your landlord will absolutely be responsive and helpful. I've been in those condos and they're great. But I wasn't always able to afford to live in nice condos. When I lived in a cheap ground-floor unit and my bathroom started spewing feces out of the toilet and bathtub because the building's main sewer line was clogged due to the individual landlord fucking up a DIY fix, my individual landlord decided to ignore my calls because I was being annoying, and then I had to fight them through my local tenancy dispute board to reclaim the money I spent on hiring a plumber over a holiday weekend. So yeah... it depends.
  - goatcode 4y ago
    Individual landlords may vary in how they treat you, but don't corporate also? In my own experience: For corporate landlords, being a poor grad student or a tech worker didn't seem to make a difference; I was still treated like I didn't exist. In several instances there were serious issues with my unit that were affecting my health, and they were ignored. Individual landlords were awesome people -- fast and responsive to issues big and small, and even did things to make my stay better. Seems that many results vary, but I suspect that when there's no human connection, you'll get a lot of bad stuff going on
- pessimizer 4y ago
  You should tell my landlords that, the spoiled son and daughter who inherited a bunch of passive income from their mother (who was actually a great landlord), and who let the leak I could hear, and called them about, fester for over a year until a large chunk fell out of my ceiling.
option 4y ago
no individual landlords? no corporate landlords? What kind of “landlords” then? Just don’t suggest some type of “communal/socialist” housing. Been there (ussr) - f#*%k that and everything related to it.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Just don’t suggest some type of “communal/socialist” housing. Been there (ussr) - f#*%k that and everything related to it. is this the ususal government=Communal=socialist=communist brain bug? They are totally different things! UK has social housing managed by local government, it's been very succesfull and desirable. Communal apartments are a type of buildding. Community housing might is 'normal' housing run by an independant charity, you are not against individual people running charities, are you? Cohousing is a community of independant houses built around a shared space, that originated in denmark. Which one are you railing agianst here? Also why should someone be 'investing' in newbuild Apartments they won't live in, what value does that bring to the economy? They are not contributing anything other than speculation.
  - option 4y ago
    >> why should someone be 'investing' in newbuild Apartments they won't live in, what value does that bring to the economy? it funds their construction and land acquisition
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      So does selling the apartment to future homeowners, which can be boosted by providing mortgages to young families. If the company needs finance it can produce corporate bonds, taking out loans, the state could provide funding, etc. What is the basis for claiming any more funding is required for their construction and aquisition? This 'investment' only drives up real estate prices, and as a result ever more money will be required for future land aquisitions. It is literally a system that easts itself.
spfzero 4y ago
Housing is a good investment as long as people can afford the rent, and want to live there. If people could not, or do not want to live there, the house stays vacant and it becomes a poor investment. When housing becomes a bad investment, very few people will spend their money and time building new ones. The demand for housing depends on demographics, it has nothing to do with it being a good or bad investment. But whether it is a good or bad investment has a lot to do with demand for housing.
colinmhayes 4y ago
Rising housing prices are caused by the post 08 slowdown in building. The Bay Area alone is 1 million units short . We need to deregulate the housing market. Only 2% of units nationwide are owned by large scale investors. That number is going up, but for now it’s not a real problem.
MasterPI 4y ago
> It's also difficult (impossible) to curb demand for housing if housing is far and away the best investment you can possibly make, both in the short, medium, and long-term. With the population numbers in decline in the west (especially Europe), will there be enough demand in the medium and long-term for housing?
- MrMan 4y ago
  if we encourage immigration, yes
api 4y ago
> Unfortunately, so many people in the west have their net worth tied up in their homes that policies directly targeting property values is political suicide. I long ago concluded that the only way to escape high housing costs is to leave high cost of living places. No reform large enough to make a real dent is politically feasible, and in some overpriced cities the sheer amount of construction that would be required to ease demand is itself problematic. My generation (late gen-X / early gen-Y) was all about moving to cool cities and living where you want, but I don't think this works anymore. If you move to a place like New York or San Francisco without the move bringing with it a job that pays more than the real estate cost increase, you will never be able to accumulate wealth. Much of your surplus will be eaten by rent and you'll never be able to get on the ownership side where you can accumulate home equity because the rent won't let you gather a large enough down payment or buffer. (The prices are so high even a 5% down payment can be pretty sizable and you won't get a loan on decent terms for less than that.) When these hipster urbanism trends got going the market was very different. It was right after the great urban crime wave of the early 1990s. Urban real estate was underpriced and going urban was seen as very contrarian, even bizarre and frightening. Going downtown meant affordable housing with nearby walkable stuff, cool old architecture (including those old school warehouse lofts... try getting one now!), and cool people. The underpriced real estate and semi-abandoned old buildings also provided a ton of "marginal space" for wild parties, underground performances, art, and all kinds of cool stuff. Then the prices went absolutely crazy starting in the early 2000s and exploding after the re-inflation of the housing market post-2008. The core problem is that price signals didn't work. There should have been an urban building boom as more people urbanized, but a combination of NIMBYism and bad zoning largely prevented it. Demand went up and supply did not and grade school economics tells you the rest. Personally I think the value proposition is gone now. Not only are the prices nuts but the cool stuff that provided a big part of the draw is all priced out. If I were 20 I would stay away from inflated real estate markets. The only exception might be moving to one of them for a short while to build your career and then leaving. That may still make sense. But don't plan to settle there unless you land a massively high paying job. E.g. I would not stay in the SF Bay Area for less than $350k/year. If you're not in a field with high earning potential just forget about those places. I'm seeing a quiet trend these days of artists and other creators working in areas that don't pay as handsomely as tech moving to small towns, and not even necessarily the "hot" cool ones. There are a few small towns in the Appalachian region that have become little artist havens.
kelnos 4y ago
Wait, so you want to prohibit individual landlords in favor of large corporations managing the country's rental stock? That sounds like a perfect recipe for monopolistic behavior. And significantly raises the barrier for new entrants into the market.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Wait, so you want to prohibit individual landlords in favor of large corporations managing the country's rental stock? How did you get “prohibit individual landlords in favor of large corporations managing rental stock” from the upstream criticism of the forces driving both individual and corporate investment in housing-as-appreciating asset.
ocbyc 4y ago
How are individual landlords to blame for anything? I was with you on the rest.
eftychis 4y ago
The problem is that the point at which housing market will be such a dumpster fire will be a post-(economically)-apocalyptic for the U.S. -- and inadvertently the rest of the world. Don't forget what happened in 2007, and you are not even close to what can happen -- from a back in the envelope here of course. Housing might be the topic that dooms U.S. may way way down the road. But the GDP damage and opportunity cost lost annually is substantial. There should be a form of buy in from the government at some point -- kind of keep your house and get tax credit and we are moving on. Or we reach the point of a literal revolution on the topic, where people ask for houses instead of bread.

by mjr00 4y ago

pbk1 4y ago

> if housing is far and away the best investment you can possibly make, both in the short, medium, and long-term. citation needed? genuinely curious - are there studies about long-term returns from housing vs. other asset classes (namely public equities)?

bradfa 4y ago
Local to me, real estate investment really only works if you're a landlord and the rent is your income. Buying then selling or flipping homes has not historically been a profitable endeavor. If you timed things just right for COVID, maybe you made a good return, but otherwise in history prices have been rather stable and increasing only similar to inflation for decades. Surely there are markets where flipping houses is extremely profitable, but it's not all markets.
saurik 4y ago
I did a Google search for "long-term returns from housing vs. other asset classes" (purposefully using exactly what you typed here to show how easy this is) and found a ton of references showing this is an overly-strong (and even somewhat "debated") claim but (as far as I am concerned) right enough for a discussion forum (and remember a lot of people aren't in a good mental position to own stocks but have to live somewhere anyway and so might as well own a house). https://seekingalpha.com/article/4242070-in-long-run-house-wins https://seekingalpha.com/article/4242070-in-long-run-house-w... > This mix of comparable returns (Finding 1) with lower volatility (Finding 2) leads to one of the research's most puzzling, but fascinating, discoveries: over the very long run (circa the last century), housing earned a superior risk-adjusted return than equities. Sharpe ratios for the asset summarise this fact; note too that the pattern is consistent across countries.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
thaeli 4y ago
Owner-occupied is kind of a special case, too, because you've got to live somewhere. You could be paying $X to rent, or $X+Y as a mortgage plus upkeep, so the additional "investment" you're making is just $Y. In some cases rents are so high that, especially if you stay in one place a long time, you're actually paying $X-Y to own, so there's a positive return every month in addition to the equity you're accruing. Yeah, this is a horribly broken system, but it does seem to be how things work.
lisper 4y ago
No, there aren't, because it isn't true. Residential real estate underperforms equities [1]. [1] https://jai.pm-research.com/content/23/2/111 https://jai.pm-research.com/content/23/2/111
- abigail95 4y ago
  Does this account for the subsidy, tax advantages and leverage available in real estate vs equities?
enragedcacti 4y ago
My understanding is that it shakes out to a couple of things: 1) while not beating the S&P, historical returns on real estate are pretty good and less volatile 2) There are a number of significant tax advantages to home ownership 3) you can't live inside a stock. Building equity instead of paying rent is a good thing 4) you can rent it out, making it pay for itself while accruing value as long as you are willing to add your own labor It's hard to put that all into a chart since (2) and (3), and (4) are personalized and partially mutually exclusive and the tax landscape is always changing.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > Building equity instead of paying rent is a good thing That depends heavily on your goals. I hear this a lot, but it always reads to me like people think equity just magically happens when you buy a home (with a mortgage). No, you have to put money into it monthly, and a portion of that goes to pay of principal, which builds equity. Whether or not putting that money into a large, fixed, illiquid asset (versus stocks/bonds) is a good idea... well, it depends. Personally, if I could get an interest-only mortgage with a reasonable interest rate (for my primary home), I would probably go for it. I personally don't care all that much about building equity, and I'd rather free up that cash for other investments. Of course, many people would use the option of an interest-only mortgage in order to buy even more house than they can afford, instead of for the purposes of freeing up cash, and then end up in dire financial straits, as we saw in the 00s. Also, re: paying rent vs. building equity: yes, I do have a larger space than when I was renting, but I am also paying more than my last rent, in property tax + mortgage interest + HOA dues. That's money that's just as equivalently "thrown away" as if I was just renting. I don't regret this decision, but let's not pretend that renting is throwing away money, and owning is perfect use of money.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Mortgage is the only type of leverage that an average Joe can get cheaply. Any attempt at getting a 'normal' loan will be met with insane interest rate. That's the main reason why housing market is what it is.
beiller 4y ago
There is a lot of research suggesting that housing is not the best investment compared to equities. Many people conflate leverage with real-estate investment. If you apply the same leverage to equities they will far and away outperform real-estate. Try S and P 500 calculator with dividend reinvestment to get an idea. In my opinion, if real-estate out-paces equities or other forms of investment, then we barrel towards a world where no one can afford to save for shelter any more which doesn't make sense, but that's just my opinion. Unfortunately, real-estate is still a profitable investment, and small piddly fed rate hikes won't change that any time soon.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > There is a lot of research suggesting that housing is not the best investment compared to equities. And yet most retail investors loose money. My family managed to lose money both by investing in bonds and by investing in index fund - quite of an achievement. They never lost money in real estate. The reason should be obvious -> most people understand what is a house and how it works, they understand the city they live in and good VS bad areas. Most people don't udnerstand the stock market.

Victerius 4y ago

> It's also difficult (impossible) to curb demand for housing if housing is far and away the best investment you can possibly make, both in the short, medium, and long-term. Rapid population decline. The coronavirus helped in this regard.

honkler 4y ago
not when you want to import the rest of the world. I mean immigration, ofcourse. Now before downvoting, understand that exactly this has been the strategy of canadian government to keep property prices up.
- alephxyz 4y ago
  To keep property prices up or to deal with an aging population / lack of manual labor?

goatcode 4y ago

The sad thing is that individual landlords are among the most responsive to tenant needs, while corporate landlords often are sons of Hell who should be Thanos-snapped out of existence.

mjr00 4y ago
> The sad thing is that individual landlords are among the most responsive to tenant needs, This is extremely dependent on a lot of factors. When you are an upper-middle class tech worker renting a luxury condo, your landlord will absolutely be responsive and helpful. I've been in those condos and they're great. But I wasn't always able to afford to live in nice condos. When I lived in a cheap ground-floor unit and my bathroom started spewing feces out of the toilet and bathtub because the building's main sewer line was clogged due to the individual landlord fucking up a DIY fix, my individual landlord decided to ignore my calls because I was being annoying, and then I had to fight them through my local tenancy dispute board to reclaim the money I spent on hiring a plumber over a holiday weekend. So yeah... it depends.
- goatcode 4y ago
  Individual landlords may vary in how they treat you, but don't corporate also? In my own experience: For corporate landlords, being a poor grad student or a tech worker didn't seem to make a difference; I was still treated like I didn't exist. In several instances there were serious issues with my unit that were affecting my health, and they were ignored. Individual landlords were awesome people -- fast and responsive to issues big and small, and even did things to make my stay better. Seems that many results vary, but I suspect that when there's no human connection, you'll get a lot of bad stuff going on
pessimizer 4y ago
You should tell my landlords that, the spoiled son and daughter who inherited a bunch of passive income from their mother (who was actually a great landlord), and who let the leak I could hear, and called them about, fester for over a year until a large chunk fell out of my ceiling.

option 4y ago

no individual landlords? no corporate landlords? What kind of “landlords” then? Just don’t suggest some type of “communal/socialist” housing. Been there (ussr) - f#*%k that and everything related to it.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> Just don’t suggest some type of “communal/socialist” housing. Been there (ussr) - f#*%k that and everything related to it. is this the ususal government=Communal=socialist=communist brain bug? They are totally different things! UK has social housing managed by local government, it's been very succesfull and desirable. Communal apartments are a type of buildding. Community housing might is 'normal' housing run by an independant charity, you are not against individual people running charities, are you? Cohousing is a community of independant houses built around a shared space, that originated in denmark. Which one are you railing agianst here? Also why should someone be 'investing' in newbuild Apartments they won't live in, what value does that bring to the economy? They are not contributing anything other than speculation.
- option 4y ago
  >> why should someone be 'investing' in newbuild Apartments they won't live in, what value does that bring to the economy? it funds their construction and land acquisition
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    So does selling the apartment to future homeowners, which can be boosted by providing mortgages to young families. If the company needs finance it can produce corporate bonds, taking out loans, the state could provide funding, etc. What is the basis for claiming any more funding is required for their construction and aquisition? This 'investment' only drives up real estate prices, and as a result ever more money will be required for future land aquisitions. It is literally a system that easts itself.

spfzero 4y ago

Housing is a good investment as long as people can afford the rent, and want to live there. If people could not, or do not want to live there, the house stays vacant and it becomes a poor investment. When housing becomes a bad investment, very few people will spend their money and time building new ones. The demand for housing depends on demographics, it has nothing to do with it being a good or bad investment. But whether it is a good or bad investment has a lot to do with demand for housing.

colinmhayes 4y ago

Rising housing prices are caused by the post 08 slowdown in building. The Bay Area alone is 1 million units short . We need to deregulate the housing market. Only 2% of units nationwide are owned by large scale investors. That number is going up, but for now it’s not a real problem.

MasterPI 4y ago

> It's also difficult (impossible) to curb demand for housing if housing is far and away the best investment you can possibly make, both in the short, medium, and long-term. With the population numbers in decline in the west (especially Europe), will there be enough demand in the medium and long-term for housing?

MrMan 4y ago
if we encourage immigration, yes

api 4y ago

> Unfortunately, so many people in the west have their net worth tied up in their homes that policies directly targeting property values is political suicide. I long ago concluded that the only way to escape high housing costs is to leave high cost of living places. No reform large enough to make a real dent is politically feasible, and in some overpriced cities the sheer amount of construction that would be required to ease demand is itself problematic. My generation (late gen-X / early gen-Y) was all about moving to cool cities and living where you want, but I don't think this works anymore. If you move to a place like New York or San Francisco without the move bringing with it a job that pays more than the real estate cost increase, you will never be able to accumulate wealth. Much of your surplus will be eaten by rent and you'll never be able to get on the ownership side where you can accumulate home equity because the rent won't let you gather a large enough down payment or buffer. (The prices are so high even a 5% down payment can be pretty sizable and you won't get a loan on decent terms for less than that.) When these hipster urbanism trends got going the market was very different. It was right after the great urban crime wave of the early 1990s. Urban real estate was underpriced and going urban was seen as very contrarian, even bizarre and frightening. Going downtown meant affordable housing with nearby walkable stuff, cool old architecture (including those old school warehouse lofts... try getting one now!), and cool people. The underpriced real estate and semi-abandoned old buildings also provided a ton of "marginal space" for wild parties, underground performances, art, and all kinds of cool stuff. Then the prices went absolutely crazy starting in the early 2000s and exploding after the re-inflation of the housing market post-2008. The core problem is that price signals didn't work. There should have been an urban building boom as more people urbanized, but a combination of NIMBYism and bad zoning largely prevented it. Demand went up and supply did not and grade school economics tells you the rest. Personally I think the value proposition is gone now. Not only are the prices nuts but the cool stuff that provided a big part of the draw is all priced out. If I were 20 I would stay away from inflated real estate markets. The only exception might be moving to one of them for a short while to build your career and then leaving. That may still make sense. But don't plan to settle there unless you land a massively high paying job. E.g. I would not stay in the SF Bay Area for less than $350k/year. If you're not in a field with high earning potential just forget about those places. I'm seeing a quiet trend these days of artists and other creators working in areas that don't pay as handsomely as tech moving to small towns, and not even necessarily the "hot" cool ones. There are a few small towns in the Appalachian region that have become little artist havens.

kelnos 4y ago

Wait, so you want to prohibit individual landlords in favor of large corporations managing the country's rental stock? That sounds like a perfect recipe for monopolistic behavior. And significantly raises the barrier for new entrants into the market.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Wait, so you want to prohibit individual landlords in favor of large corporations managing the country's rental stock? How did you get “prohibit individual landlords in favor of large corporations managing rental stock” from the upstream criticism of the forces driving both individual and corporate investment in housing-as-appreciating asset.

ocbyc 4y ago

How are individual landlords to blame for anything? I was with you on the rest.

eftychis 4y ago

The problem is that the point at which housing market will be such a dumpster fire will be a post-(economically)-apocalyptic for the U.S. -- and inadvertently the rest of the world. Don't forget what happened in 2007, and you are not even close to what can happen -- from a back in the envelope here of course. Housing might be the topic that dooms U.S. may way way down the road. But the GDP damage and opportunity cost lost annually is substantial. There should be a form of buy in from the government at some point -- kind of keep your house and get tax credit and we are moving on. Or we reach the point of a literal revolution on the topic, where people ask for houses instead of bread.