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We spent 40 years believing that house prices were fine because the debt load didn't matter because interest rates would go down forever. Prices are based on th

We spent 40 years believing that house prices were fine because the debt load didn't matter because interest rates would go down forever. Prices are based on the seller extracting the maximum ability to pay from the buyer, so payments were effectively fixed, and every drop in interest rates was perfectly offset by an increase in the purchase price. Then we hit interest zero, there was nowhere left to go. Now we're finally back to more historically normal and healthy interest rates, and it has broken the housing market. We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. We have to increase supply to meet demand. And we're going to have to pay more attention to driving down the actual dollar cost of homes, not just the monthly payment.

spywaregorilla 3y ago
> Then we hit interest zero, there was nowhere left to go. Not really. We just had impetus to raise them.
Analemma_ 3y ago
> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. We can't have this, because a huge fraction of household wealth is tied up in people's houses. If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. To be clear, I completely agree with you that this system has to be dismantled before it gets worse, and a lot of this supposed wealth is illusory anyway: if your house has a "market value" of $750K but no millennial or zoomer can ever possibly pay that, it's not actually worth $750K. But making it actually happen is going to involve a huge, ugly political fight which you can't just handwave away with "we need to have a cultural shift". There are real material considerations at play here, not just culture.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  > We can't have this, because a huge fraction of household wealth is tied up in people's houses. If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. So the question is if the wealthy can remain wealthy, or if the poor can get houses? I'm sorry, but... as a Catholic the choice is obvious to me. Blessed are the poor, etc. etc. We should favor those who don't have wealth yet. ---------- There's other investments, and any such large-scale buildup of houses will take place over a long-enough time period that investors can reallocate wealth appropriately (reverse mortgages and then move the money to the stock market or something). Talk to a financial advisor if you need help moving wealth out of your house and dumping that onto someone else. Meanwhile, there's no actual solution to the young couple who needs a house for their next baby to raise their family. Get them a damn house. Period.
  - Analemma_ 3y ago
    I mean I agree with you. But what I'm trying to convey is, if you go to voters and say, "here's a policy update that will fix the housing crisis and secure a future for the next generation, but it will also subtract $400K from your total wealth", they're going to not just say no, but fight you to their last breath. Proposed policies need to account for this if they're going to have a realistic hope of success. And no, "move it to the stock market" will not fix this problem. Again, imagine putting this question to someone in their 50s with a house they have nearly paid off: "I could take this wealth and move it to the volatile stock market, or I could continue the policy of protectionist zoning restrictions so my always-appreciating asset can keep on appreciating as it has done for decades. Gonna go with door #2, Bob."
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      The wealthy throughout history have often made sacrifices when wealth was obviously unfair. Or when wealth was needed to move society forward. What a wealthy person wants isn't necessarily greed, and we need to stop thinking like that. Even in Roman times, wealthy got together to fund various projects for the greater good. What the wealthy want most of all, is if you take their wealth, that it truly does go towards a greater good. And "building more houses" takes wealth through free-market capitalist systems in any case (ie: its not a direct wealth taking we're talking about, but a steady change as zoning laws allow more houses to be built). ------------ Most of these "wealthy retirees" are looking aghast at their children's opportunities. My brother-in-law's parents may own 3 houses, but they were complaining to me about their daughter's inability to find a house in this current market. They care far, far more about their daughter finding a good house and starting her family, than the value of their 3 houses. And I bet many, many, many other families are in the same situation. (Rich/Wealthy retirees scared for their children / grandchildren).
      - hotpotamus 3y ago
        If they care more about their daughter finding a house, and they have 3, then why don't they give her one?
- willis936 3y ago
  >We can't have this, because a huge fraction of household wealth is tied up in people's houses. If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. As someone staring down never having the ability to get into that club: that's a price I'm willing to pay. In fact I'm willing to pay much more than that. This is the issue that dictates my vote.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I don't think I follow - which club are you not getting into, retirement or home ownership? Because if you don't have a home, then you aren't the one paying if the value decreases.
    - willis936 3y ago
      I don't own a home. Housing depreciation is a price I'm happy to pay. That is indeed the cheekiness of my comment.
- spamizbad 3y ago
  > you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. I don't understand how this works - if the assumption is you're going to sell your house for a profit, isn't a significant chunk of your upside just going to be rolled into your new housing?
  - willis936 3y ago
    It's reverse mortgage. Balance the checkbook on the way out.
- jfim 3y ago
  > If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. The alternative is that the younger generations defer or forego having children due to housing insecurity.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  > if your house has a "market value" of $750K but no millennial or zoomer can ever possibly pay that, it's not actually worth $750K. The valuation isn’t illusory if you can constrain supply and monopolize ownership. The plan for the next generations is for them to never own housing and instead be parasitized by huge investment firms who buy up all the existing stock.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  We have to start somewhere. We have people who say that we can't demolish houses as investments because it's one of the few remaining holds of generational, familial wealth left. And that's true. But we also don't have enough housing, and building more housing will naturally devalue the housing that exists. That's also true. But we can't simply let this keep going. There are people who can afford those homes: private equity firms, and they're buying more than they ever have to rent them out. While we bicker about which way to go about it is best while ensuring we harm as few people as possible, the people already in charge right now are teeing up to not only destroy them as investment vehicles for the people who own them, but ensure that no people will ever own them again, that we'll all just be little rent-paying serfs in their various fiefdoms. These issues are complicated, and any action taken will have ripple effects across centuries, much like the practices of redlining have led to generations of impoverished minorities and over-policed communities. But at some point we have to begin solving the damn problems instead of just arguing and debating ad-infinitum while the system already in place is making all of it objectively, factually worse. And frankly, my inner cynic sees the drumbeat of the neoliberal establishment, the ones most likely to have the most valuable "investment accounts" in the form of homes, constantly saying "well we need to make thoughtful considerations about this before we do anything" over and over and over, for years on end, while their investments continue to gain value year over year, and the societal harms inflicted on others continue to not be their problem, as frankly, not positioned or well incentivized to actually fix it since they directly profit from the problem they're being asked to solve. I don't want to believe none of you are capable of empathy, but incentives are much, much stronger than feelings, and none of the establishment middle-class has any solid, incentivized reason to wind down the profit machines that are continuing to make them insanely rich. That worries me.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    > We have to start somewhere. We have people who say that we can't demolish houses as investments because it's one of the few remaining holds of generational, familial wealth left. Why would we want that? My great great grandfather was luckier than yours, and that's why I live like a king and you clean my shoes?
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  > nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people Your house is only a "retirement account" if you're willing to take out a reverse mortgage, move into some much cheaper home, or share a living room with other old folks in an "assisted living" institution. Some of us on the other hand would prefer a future unencumbered by debt, "aging in place" in our own homes.
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  Counterparty risk. If housing craters broadly, you don’t want to bet on reliable payments from banks holding the bag.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. A similar argument is advanced to protect shareholders who facilitate the degradation of quality of life across society. Perhaps retirement options should come with complete and crystal clear disclosure of actual consequences - and that those consequences needed to be vocally repeated by the buyer prior to acceptance. Recorded and witnessed, of course.
- cykros 3y ago
  You don't need to sell it to a millenial or zoomer. You sell it to a company, who rents it to a millenial or zoomer.
dragontamer 3y ago
> Then we hit interest zero, there was nowhere left to go Europe went to negative rates while USA did QE rounds actually.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. Good luck with that one. We’ve been dealing with this since the 70s when Prop 13 passed in California. The primary responses have been to vilify the homeless for their own plight and funnel billions into “affordable housing schemes” that are little more than graft engines for local politicians.
- spacemadness 3y ago
  Many fellow Bay Area Californians apparently like to sit back and watch their cities crumble into a neoliberal hellscape as long as its profitable to them. Folks in Berkeley pretending they’re progressive while fighting housing initiatives for instance. It’s becoming a nightmare fueled by pure greed.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    Socially liberal, fiscally acquisitive.
gadders 3y ago
>>We have to increase supply to meet demand. You can also reduce demand by reducing immigration (legal and illegal).
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  It's hard to build a lot of new housing in a labor shortage.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> Now we're finally back to more historically normal and healthy interest rates, and it has broken the housing market. 1980s interest rates were higher than now. The 1980s middle class could afford homes. A new 1987 townhome that cost $212k (in inf adj 2023 dollars) costs about $500k today - allowing for similar quality, features, market. I think houses are unaffordable because they cost more than double what they did.
darth_avocado 3y ago
The problem is that people who could afford it, bought homes at a higher price. They will not sell it for less than they bought it for. Combined with high interest rates, total cost of ownership is a through the roof. This wouldn’t have been a problem if this was an asset that everyone doesn’t need and the supply was more.
- cykros 3y ago
  It's not that they won't sell at a loss. It's that they won't sell at a loss AND take on a new mortgage with a rate that is 2-3x what their existing mortgage costs to service. Owning a home creates losses of its own. I'd know, with my water heater going out, furnished basement flooding in a freak incident, and a tree falling on my roof, all in the same year. If I could get 3% on a different home, it wouldn't take a ton of enticing. Not doing it at 7% for anything though.
financypants 3y ago
I am personally very curious to know when interest rates are not perfectly offset by increased purchase price. I believe this is a popular belief that is wrong. That can’t possibly be the case, not even in the majority of mkts.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  This past year. Interest rates went up, and then prices went up. No offset occurred, everything just became dramatically more expensive. Bam. Theory already busted.
  - quickslowdown 3y ago
    Seems like financypants lives in a beautiful world where corporations aren't greedy shitbags engaged in price gouging
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      Well, the real problem with regards to housing is that we just didn't build enough houses IMO. Cheap houses in particular get voted off of most city councils or other local politics. It only costs $20k per trailer in a trailerpark IIRC, and so trailer parks can build hundreds of housing units for under 10-million invested. Or various apartment buildings can be built with similar cost-efficiencies. Or Row-homes, or multiplex homes, etc. etc. The issue is convincing the public that low-cost housing is to the benefic of society and that its a good thing to build. Most people see them as ways of attracting drug-dealers, black people / minorities, or turning a neighborhood into a Ghetto. -------- So build enough low-cost housing. Build enough medium-cost housing. Etc. etc. The problem is that in most municipalities, people are only happy when high-cost housing is built. But that's just not sustainable.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. I've been saying this for years. Real estate investing is an absolute cancer on society. It is utterly unreal to me that people think their house should go up in value over time higher than the rate of inflation without doing any improvements. But it's not even just that, but people and corporations buying up houses for the sole purpose of renting them out, which merely furthers wealth inequality. The owners are financial vampires, taking advantage of the fact that a bank will tell someone "We don't think you can afford a $2,000/month mortgage" when their current rent is $2,500/month. I think what upsets me the most isn't the widening inequality, but that so many of these landlords have a savior complex, thinking they're doing a huge service. No, you took a home off the market for the sole purpose of enriching yourself. The demand for rental properties pushes house prices up, locking more people out of home ownership. We need severe disincentives for purchasing single family homes for the purpose of renting them out. I'm sure someone is going to accuse me of being a sour renter, but nope. I've owned my house since 2015. In 2019, I could have bought a second house to rent out, but I chose not to because it's incredibly immoral.
- jemmyw 3y ago
  I totally agree with this stance. Among my peer group a couple of folks own a second property they rent out and the "if we didn't where would our tenant live?" vibe is bizarre. They'd live in a house, maybe even being able to afford the one you rent to them.
  - financypants 3y ago
    Is this landlord savior complex common? I’ve never come across it. It’s a silly perspective even at face value.
    - bugglebeetle 3y ago
      It’s how liberals resolve the cognitive dissonance of getting someone poorer than them to pay for their mortgage, without seeing themselves as greedy or parasitic.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> spent 40 years believing that house prices were fine because the debt load didn't matter because interest rates would go down forever We spent half a century engineering scarcity. Falling rates were a nice add-on. But they were never a central part of the thesis.

spywaregorilla 3y ago

> Then we hit interest zero, there was nowhere left to go. Not really. We just had impetus to raise them.

Analemma_ 3y ago

> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. We can't have this, because a huge fraction of household wealth is tied up in people's houses. If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. To be clear, I completely agree with you that this system has to be dismantled before it gets worse, and a lot of this supposed wealth is illusory anyway: if your house has a "market value" of $750K but no millennial or zoomer can ever possibly pay that, it's not actually worth $750K. But making it actually happen is going to involve a huge, ugly political fight which you can't just handwave away with "we need to have a cultural shift". There are real material considerations at play here, not just culture.

dragontamer 3y ago
> We can't have this, because a huge fraction of household wealth is tied up in people's houses. If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. So the question is if the wealthy can remain wealthy, or if the poor can get houses? I'm sorry, but... as a Catholic the choice is obvious to me. Blessed are the poor, etc. etc. We should favor those who don't have wealth yet. ---------- There's other investments, and any such large-scale buildup of houses will take place over a long-enough time period that investors can reallocate wealth appropriately (reverse mortgages and then move the money to the stock market or something). Talk to a financial advisor if you need help moving wealth out of your house and dumping that onto someone else. Meanwhile, there's no actual solution to the young couple who needs a house for their next baby to raise their family. Get them a damn house. Period.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  I mean I agree with you. But what I'm trying to convey is, if you go to voters and say, "here's a policy update that will fix the housing crisis and secure a future for the next generation, but it will also subtract $400K from your total wealth", they're going to not just say no, but fight you to their last breath. Proposed policies need to account for this if they're going to have a realistic hope of success. And no, "move it to the stock market" will not fix this problem. Again, imagine putting this question to someone in their 50s with a house they have nearly paid off: "I could take this wealth and move it to the volatile stock market, or I could continue the policy of protectionist zoning restrictions so my always-appreciating asset can keep on appreciating as it has done for decades. Gonna go with door #2, Bob."
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    The wealthy throughout history have often made sacrifices when wealth was obviously unfair. Or when wealth was needed to move society forward. What a wealthy person wants isn't necessarily greed, and we need to stop thinking like that. Even in Roman times, wealthy got together to fund various projects for the greater good. What the wealthy want most of all, is if you take their wealth, that it truly does go towards a greater good. And "building more houses" takes wealth through free-market capitalist systems in any case (ie: its not a direct wealth taking we're talking about, but a steady change as zoning laws allow more houses to be built). ------------ Most of these "wealthy retirees" are looking aghast at their children's opportunities. My brother-in-law's parents may own 3 houses, but they were complaining to me about their daughter's inability to find a house in this current market. They care far, far more about their daughter finding a good house and starting her family, than the value of their 3 houses. And I bet many, many, many other families are in the same situation. (Rich/Wealthy retirees scared for their children / grandchildren).
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      If they care more about their daughter finding a house, and they have 3, then why don't they give her one?
willis936 3y ago
>We can't have this, because a huge fraction of household wealth is tied up in people's houses. If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. As someone staring down never having the ability to get into that club: that's a price I'm willing to pay. In fact I'm willing to pay much more than that. This is the issue that dictates my vote.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I don't think I follow - which club are you not getting into, retirement or home ownership? Because if you don't have a home, then you aren't the one paying if the value decreases.
  - willis936 3y ago
    I don't own a home. Housing depreciation is a price I'm happy to pay. That is indeed the cheekiness of my comment.
spamizbad 3y ago
> you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. I don't understand how this works - if the assumption is you're going to sell your house for a profit, isn't a significant chunk of your upside just going to be rolled into your new housing?
- willis936 3y ago
  It's reverse mortgage. Balance the checkbook on the way out.
jfim 3y ago
> If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. The alternative is that the younger generations defer or forego having children due to housing insecurity.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
> if your house has a "market value" of $750K but no millennial or zoomer can ever possibly pay that, it's not actually worth $750K. The valuation isn’t illusory if you can constrain supply and monopolize ownership. The plan for the next generations is for them to never own housing and instead be parasitized by huge investment firms who buy up all the existing stock.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
We have to start somewhere. We have people who say that we can't demolish houses as investments because it's one of the few remaining holds of generational, familial wealth left. And that's true. But we also don't have enough housing, and building more housing will naturally devalue the housing that exists. That's also true. But we can't simply let this keep going. There are people who can afford those homes: private equity firms, and they're buying more than they ever have to rent them out. While we bicker about which way to go about it is best while ensuring we harm as few people as possible, the people already in charge right now are teeing up to not only destroy them as investment vehicles for the people who own them, but ensure that no people will ever own them again, that we'll all just be little rent-paying serfs in their various fiefdoms. These issues are complicated, and any action taken will have ripple effects across centuries, much like the practices of redlining have led to generations of impoverished minorities and over-policed communities. But at some point we have to begin solving the damn problems instead of just arguing and debating ad-infinitum while the system already in place is making all of it objectively, factually worse. And frankly, my inner cynic sees the drumbeat of the neoliberal establishment, the ones most likely to have the most valuable "investment accounts" in the form of homes, constantly saying "well we need to make thoughtful considerations about this before we do anything" over and over and over, for years on end, while their investments continue to gain value year over year, and the societal harms inflicted on others continue to not be their problem, as frankly, not positioned or well incentivized to actually fix it since they directly profit from the problem they're being asked to solve. I don't want to believe none of you are capable of empathy, but incentives are much, much stronger than feelings, and none of the establishment middle-class has any solid, incentivized reason to wind down the profit machines that are continuing to make them insanely rich. That worries me.
- ta1243 3y ago
  > We have to start somewhere. We have people who say that we can't demolish houses as investments because it's one of the few remaining holds of generational, familial wealth left. Why would we want that? My great great grandfather was luckier than yours, and that's why I live like a king and you clean my shoes?
everybodyknows 3y ago
> nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people Your house is only a "retirement account" if you're willing to take out a reverse mortgage, move into some much cheaper home, or share a living room with other old folks in an "assisted living" institution. Some of us on the other hand would prefer a future unencumbered by debt, "aging in place" in our own homes.
erik_seaberg 3y ago
Counterparty risk. If housing craters broadly, you don’t want to bet on reliable payments from banks holding the bag.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. A similar argument is advanced to protect shareholders who facilitate the degradation of quality of life across society. Perhaps retirement options should come with complete and crystal clear disclosure of actual consequences - and that those consequences needed to be vocally repeated by the buyer prior to acceptance. Recorded and witnessed, of course.
cykros 3y ago
You don't need to sell it to a millenial or zoomer. You sell it to a company, who rents it to a millenial or zoomer.

dragontamer 3y ago

> Then we hit interest zero, there was nowhere left to go Europe went to negative rates while USA did QE rounds actually.

bugglebeetle 3y ago

> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. Good luck with that one. We’ve been dealing with this since the 70s when Prop 13 passed in California. The primary responses have been to vilify the homeless for their own plight and funnel billions into “affordable housing schemes” that are little more than graft engines for local politicians.

spacemadness 3y ago
Many fellow Bay Area Californians apparently like to sit back and watch their cities crumble into a neoliberal hellscape as long as its profitable to them. Folks in Berkeley pretending they’re progressive while fighting housing initiatives for instance. It’s becoming a nightmare fueled by pure greed.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Socially liberal, fiscally acquisitive.

gadders 3y ago

>>We have to increase supply to meet demand. You can also reduce demand by reducing immigration (legal and illegal).

matthewdgreen 3y ago
It's hard to build a lot of new housing in a labor shortage.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> Now we're finally back to more historically normal and healthy interest rates, and it has broken the housing market. 1980s interest rates were higher than now. The 1980s middle class could afford homes. A new 1987 townhome that cost $212k (in inf adj 2023 dollars) costs about $500k today - allowing for similar quality, features, market. I think houses are unaffordable because they cost more than double what they did.

darth_avocado 3y ago

The problem is that people who could afford it, bought homes at a higher price. They will not sell it for less than they bought it for. Combined with high interest rates, total cost of ownership is a through the roof. This wouldn’t have been a problem if this was an asset that everyone doesn’t need and the supply was more.

cykros 3y ago
It's not that they won't sell at a loss. It's that they won't sell at a loss AND take on a new mortgage with a rate that is 2-3x what their existing mortgage costs to service. Owning a home creates losses of its own. I'd know, with my water heater going out, furnished basement flooding in a freak incident, and a tree falling on my roof, all in the same year. If I could get 3% on a different home, it wouldn't take a ton of enticing. Not doing it at 7% for anything though.

financypants 3y ago

I am personally very curious to know when interest rates are not perfectly offset by increased purchase price. I believe this is a popular belief that is wrong. That can’t possibly be the case, not even in the majority of mkts.

dragontamer 3y ago
This past year. Interest rates went up, and then prices went up. No offset occurred, everything just became dramatically more expensive. Bam. Theory already busted.
- quickslowdown 3y ago
  Seems like financypants lives in a beautiful world where corporations aren't greedy shitbags engaged in price gouging
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Well, the real problem with regards to housing is that we just didn't build enough houses IMO. Cheap houses in particular get voted off of most city councils or other local politics. It only costs $20k per trailer in a trailerpark IIRC, and so trailer parks can build hundreds of housing units for under 10-million invested. Or various apartment buildings can be built with similar cost-efficiencies. Or Row-homes, or multiplex homes, etc. etc. The issue is convincing the public that low-cost housing is to the benefic of society and that its a good thing to build. Most people see them as ways of attracting drug-dealers, black people / minorities, or turning a neighborhood into a Ghetto. -------- So build enough low-cost housing. Build enough medium-cost housing. Etc. etc. The problem is that in most municipalities, people are only happy when high-cost housing is built. But that's just not sustainable.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago

> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. I've been saying this for years. Real estate investing is an absolute cancer on society. It is utterly unreal to me that people think their house should go up in value over time higher than the rate of inflation without doing any improvements. But it's not even just that, but people and corporations buying up houses for the sole purpose of renting them out, which merely furthers wealth inequality. The owners are financial vampires, taking advantage of the fact that a bank will tell someone "We don't think you can afford a $2,000/month mortgage" when their current rent is $2,500/month. I think what upsets me the most isn't the widening inequality, but that so many of these landlords have a savior complex, thinking they're doing a huge service. No, you took a home off the market for the sole purpose of enriching yourself. The demand for rental properties pushes house prices up, locking more people out of home ownership. We need severe disincentives for purchasing single family homes for the purpose of renting them out. I'm sure someone is going to accuse me of being a sour renter, but nope. I've owned my house since 2015. In 2019, I could have bought a second house to rent out, but I chose not to because it's incredibly immoral.

jemmyw 3y ago
I totally agree with this stance. Among my peer group a couple of folks own a second property they rent out and the "if we didn't where would our tenant live?" vibe is bizarre. They'd live in a house, maybe even being able to afford the one you rent to them.
- financypants 3y ago
  Is this landlord savior complex common? I’ve never come across it. It’s a silly perspective even at face value.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    It’s how liberals resolve the cognitive dissonance of getting someone poorer than them to pay for their mortgage, without seeing themselves as greedy or parasitic.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> spent 40 years believing that house prices were fine because the debt load didn't matter because interest rates would go down forever We spent half a century engineering scarcity. Falling rates were a nice add-on. But they were never a central part of the thesis.