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Here's the thing that I think a lot of people don't understand about home ownership: Housing prices going up is only beneficial if you plan to sell.
We were (very) lucky and were able to get in on the tail end of the early 2010s housing crisis and leverage the first-time homebuyer incentives that were offered at the time to buy a modest house. It cost $245k. It's currently worth $550k, and people seem to think this means we made $300k in profit! Yay us! And technically, on paper, sure, we did, but in reality, no.
Housing prices across the board are up, and we still need a place to live, so if we sold this place, we'd have to buy something else (at the same grossly inflated prices), or we'd have to rent (at grossly inflated prices). If the $550k this place is worth on paper buys us something that would have cost $245k in 2010, we haven't gained anything.
Either way, we have no intention of selling, so we will never see a cent of that increased value. What we are seeing, however, is increased property taxes since the property has, on paper, doubled in value.
What I'm getting at is, this doesn't benefit homeowners, it benefits housing investors, who are the group Trump really wants to prop up.
You know who it is good for? Boomers who are selling their big houses to go live in a condo or nursing home. Guess who votes for this shit.
Also good for people who want to flee the US before the bubble pops.
We absolutely want to, and if having money was the only barrier to doing so, we'd sell in an instant, but unfortunately it's simply not an option for a lot of people
What's the plan, if not welcome in the new country? Or it's invaded by the US?
There's plenty of countries (in Europe or elsewhere) where Americans are still welcome. Here in the Netherlands we have quite a American community and we like having them, as long as they're not maga crazies.
For me it's not even a matter of who is accepting of Americans, but who will allow me to move there. I'm an "uneducated" factory schmuck and the vast majority of countries have some professional or monetary requirements I can't meet :(
Japan lets Americans come, visa on arrival. If you want to stay longer than 90 days, you can start a business, you have a lot of leeway here, and loans are pretty cheap, like 8% for foreigners, <4% if you've been here awhile. Huge foreign community can guide you when you get here.
If you're in your 20s, you can get a working holiday visa and work for any company that will hire you.
You can't just step out for an hour and reenter like with China, Japan doesn't like visa-runs.
With China, you can get an L(tourist) visa and make a visa-run every 90 days (60 if you applied outside USA), or M visa if you plan to start a business.
The China visa process kinda sucks, dm me if you need help.
For vietnam, you can go there on a 90 day evisa, and if you're white, a fake college degree can have you working as a fake English teacher at a fake English school, for real dong.
I appreciate the information!
Aww but I don't like dong :(
You can exchange dong for goods and services.
Importing the crazy to your country. Americans are just sick they have their fairy tail founding and the we are the god given people complex.
Overly broad generalizations are not helpful. In any case, the Americans likely to leave are not the idiots who voted the fascists into power.
And if the US decides to attack there, what will the person I asked the question do?
And, you know, US Presidents whose families own real estate empires.
If no one can afford the boomer homes, the houses stay unsold so there's a balance when trying to maximise profit.
As mentioned above, that's fine for investors actually. They don't want individuals buying homes. They want people renting them. Across a long enough period, renting will be more profitable so they are happy to buy them up even if your average person can't afford the mortgage.
Why is this becoming so acceptable to Americans?
Boiling frog.
Remember, when Al Bundy and Homer Simpson showed up, they were considered 'middle class.' Homer had a house and two cars, his wife stayed home. That was normal.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average US home was $11,000.00. At that time, $1 million was a vast fortune. Nowadays, $1 million is what a rich guy pays for a party.
A honeycrisp apple costs over two fucking dollars. Five years ago it was fifty cents. Not fifty years ago. Five. Small, but entirely emblematic of the problem.
Mmm I don't know about this one, I worked at grocery stores 15 years ago and fancier single apples were around $1.50.
Neat, and totally irrelevant because we have no idea if our examples are geographically proximate. In the area I'm living in now, at the same grocery store, the price of a honeycrisp apple has more than quadrupled in the last 5 years. Averaged out that's 60% YoY inflation.
And there is a reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8-wqv9_-Ac
Okay well if they were $6 I would have mentioned that. They're not, they're like $2.
Don't get me started on luxury inflation.
Look at things like the prices for live sporting events and concerts.
Back when The Beetles were the hottest band in the world, teenagers were buying their own tickets.
Middle class folks used to be able to splurge once in a while and get the best of the best. Now that stuff is beyond the reach of mere mortals
Because the people who don't accept it don't have the power to reject it. We are owned by billionaires and our system is corrupt to the fucking core.
It's really not. The affordability crisis is one of the reasons you're seeing the unraveling of America to begin with. Americans (myself included), like most other people, are stupid, emotionally driven creatures. They can't buy a house or afford groceries so they elect a strongman who's going to get rid of the "other", because obviously it's their fault. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon, but in typical American fashion, we're being pretty extravagant about it. BoJo in the UK, the AfD, Marine Le Pen, it's a very familiar story and it's for the same reasons every time. Hitlers rise to power was in part due to a failing economy. The average person legitimately does not understand the factors that give rise to their social and economic situation and is easily manipulated by those with power and money. It may look "acceptable" to us from the outside because we're not tackling the root of the issue, but most people think they are, they just haven't actually identified the root issue. People stormed the capital in part because of affordability, they clearly want to do something, they are just too ignorant to understand. Also racism, but that's a whole different conversation.
A bunch of Americans are accelerationists in disguise. Such people strongly favor an invasion of Greenland, for instance, since it would greatly advance the accelerationist cause.
Yes, but when they do they cash out without needing comparable housing. Plus, more of them have finished paying their mortgages, so they can afford to wait.
Exactly.
Our home has doubled in value in the last 7 years, but life would be better if it had've stayed at the same price.
We're lucky enough to have somewhere to live but as a community it really sucks that its so hard for so many people - the rental market is just awful, inhumane even.
God forbid we want to buy a bigger home with some more room for the kids - upgrading just cost twice as much.
My parents are boomers and have been beneficiaries of the eternal increase in property values throughout their lives. They're in their 80s and really need to retire, but can't really afford to. Increasing property prices aren't really good for anyone.
Same here. We bought our modest house and have been slowly updating it. But we never plan on moving unless we absolutely have to. So I don't need or want it to increase in value. The value is it's my home.
What you do gain is equity. And while that equity can’t be used to pay for a new house, it can be borrowed against cheaply.
A second mortgage, such as a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit, means you can use some of that value in your house for big purchases or projects without the higher interest rates you would pay for other types of loans or a credit card.
It’s one of the reasons home ownership is financially superior to renting, even if your monthly payment might not be that different. Owning property has inherent value.
I have a mortgage payment already, and groceries have tripled in what feels like a year and a half. My property taxes went up $200 a MONTH this year. What makes you think I’m in a position to make more fucking payments?
Equity is a fucking scam, brother.
I agree in general. But it is nice to know there is an option in an emergency (cancer, or totalling a brand new car or something). Cold comfort i know but its not nothing.
If I had a dollar every time someone said “but you have equity” I’d have the pleasure of slapping someone across the face for a dollar
Plenty of people in your position fund their retirement off their home equity. It's called a reverse mortgage. If you don't have heirs you care about leaving the house to, it's not a bad way to fund retirement.
Absolutely the biggest scam ever.
My parents bought their house for $159,000 in the late 90s.
They are still in that house. Guess how much is left on their mortgage balance? $350,000.
Why? Because of cash out refinances and HELOCs.
They should be retiring soon but they're not, because people like you said these equity loans are good.
They're not. These are terrible ideas. Do not EVER take out the equity of your home.
Mmm, no.
300 fucking thousand dollars is still 300 fucking thousand dollars.
You could buy a shitshack and still have a place to live. Hell, you could even get scammed renting like a moron and you still would have made money.
This is something that has baffled me for a while when I see or hear people talking happily about their home value going up or talking about their house as an investment and get mad at the thought of a drop in home value. Even if these people never sold their house, if home prices keep increasing faster than wages, then at some point they won't be able to afford the taxes on their home. I just don't get it, smh.
There is a use case for house values going up without selling the house...kinda.
HELOCs are a great option for low interest credit, using your house's equity for collateral. Higher value = more equity = more collateral = higher credit line.
Don't for get the higher insurance rates as well.
It doesn't help home owners, home buyers or even home sellers looking for a lateral move in a new area or an upgrade to a bigger or nicer home. In fact for the latter two, it ultimately hurts them. The people that it helps are those who are looking to downsize their home, move into a nursing home, or move in with their kids. i.e. people old enough to not have kids living with them anymore, retirees, etc. They can sell their 600k home they bought for 80k 40 years ago, pocket all of that or the difference if they buy a smaller home, and use it as a slush fund on top of their social security and 401k to take vacations.
Meanwhile, their home is bought as an investment property that people like their kids and grandkids will need to rent instead of own, spending more per month than a mortgage would be for the same home, especially as rent increases every year to keep up with the housing market (even though the only costs that go up for the landlord with the market increases is a marginal amount on taxes and cost to buy MORE investment properties), and with the renters gaining no equity for their rent dollars while their landlord profits off of that money instead.
Hell, not only would lower housing prices mean that more people could become homeowners, or means current homeowners could afford to get a bigger home for their family, or live closer to work, or get a nicer/newer home that isn't a money pit.
Raising house prices ONLY benefits the elderly homeowner looking to sell and the landlords looking for more tenants and higher rents. Speaking as a homeowner, for the love of god, bring housing prices down.
I agree. It doesn't help me that people who work in my town can't live in my town. It doesn't help me when taxes go up on my house. I have the same house if prices crash lower than we bought. I have the same house if prices go up.
In fact - if prices bottom out and we can keep our jobs, maybe I have a better house because maybe we can afford to do some reno that is too expensive right now because housing is so expensive.
"Didn't work so hard" WTF? Did Trump work hard? There seems almost no correlation between who works hard and who has money. Some who work hard have money, some don't. Some who never worked at all have money, some don't.
Raising house prices do benefit you, if you don't have kids or don't otherwise have heirs you want to leave money to. Reverse mortgages exist, and their are millions of baby boomers financing their retirements off of the increases in their home equity.
A-fucking-men.
I'm in a similar ~~boat~~ house. We bought in 2011, used a USDA loan and were able to pick our place up for a song ($160k). It now has a "value" of ~$360k. And all that extra "value" is doing for me is increasing taxes and insurance costs. I'm not planning on selling any time soon, so my home "price" going up is a net negative. Sure, we might sell in a decade or so, but today's price won't have a major impact on that.
What? You're telling me the pedophile, racist, Nazi sympathizer, billionare son of a racist, Nazi sympathizer who made the family's billions by wartime real estate profiteering is more interested in protecting real estate profiteering than helping people? Color me shocked, absolutely shocked, I say. Well, not that shocked.
When you can pull out fifty k in equity to put on a roof that requires me to sell a kidney, tell this story again.
Housing in the US is super borked right now. Corpos have been buying properties driving up house prices. Rent rates are crazy high as well There's not enough affordable places to live.
Housing prices going up mostly benefits real estate agents.
As a home owner I don’t really care if my house goes up in value. I don’t include it in my net worth (even though it’s paid off).