"You buy a house tomorrow for $200k and want to sell it in 18 months because of a job opportunity or family emergency?" Well it goes without saying (and this i

"You buy a house tomorrow for $200k and want to sell it in 18 months because of a job opportunity or family emergency?" Well it goes without saying (and this is always true for anything you read on the web, right?) that the specifics of each persons circumstances need to be taken into account. Along those lines there are people that: a) Own their own business so they aren't employed by anyone and don't have a job opportunity to consider. b) Those in "a" have businesses that they intend to stick with and further may be tied down by either family or their wife's occupation (or children) c) Have considerable assets or family they wouldn't have to bail out. In any case along the lines of "family emergency" how would thinking of that situation allow anyone to ever take a chance or buy a house? What about having a startup (as only one example) and then having a "family emergency"? "Otherwise you're taking a $12,000-18,000 hit when you sell it" The main problem that I had with this article's slant is that it tried to quantify things in a way that made you think that all that mattered were dollars. Not everyone thinks like that. Or cares if they were to lose 12 to 18k they'd rather be a homeowner and live in a community as a homeowner rather than a renter in either an apartment building (with more transient residents) or as a renter in a condo or even as a renter in a neighborhood. And they are willing to part with money in order to do that. Same way some people might decide to spend $5000 on a vacation or $50,000 for an airplane (when flying the airlines obviously is cheaper in most cases).