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Comment by Alive-in-2025

5 days ago

You never know what your house or apartment or condo is worth, even to you. Maybe you can afford $400k barely, but you'll be hugely squeezed. Or maybe you'd get a bigger place if prices had dropped for your family size.

You hope conditions won't change. You can look at the current market trends to try to value it. But things will change in the next few years probably. You can guess, but you'll never "know with pretty good accuracy". The economy can go down, interest rates can change, major employers can come and go, there can be an earthquake or cancerous ground discovered there.

6 comments

Alive-in-2025

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_carbyau_  5 days ago

This is the rat race. You are competing with all the other humans around you in the same playspace of reality.

A mortgage is a loan that gives you money you don't have (yet). If you are spending money you don't have, do it wisely or suffer the consequences.

I think no special treatment. Everyone else in the same space has the same rules/uncertainty as every argument you offered.

  • cocaclub  5 days ago

    These are my feelings too, but in the interests of compassion, I would suggest a return of some proportion of equity to (human, non-LLC, non-corporate, primary resident) buyers in cash, up to bank failure. Hopefully they can then buy another house at the presumably much lower prevailing market rate. Someone has to lose, let it be in order of "he who should have known what he was doing in making this catastrophe possible."

    • _carbyau_  5 days ago

      I mean, there are a few things here. Like if the bank want the house sold on the loan because the house value goes down even though the person with the loan is willing to continue servicing it - then that seems like an own goal for the bank.

      There are a variety of circumstances that can be dreamt up for either side of the equation. And I have no compassion for lenders either.

      As you say, maybe the mortgage/loan should be seen as a partnership of some degree between the parties so that the lender is less likely to take advantage.

      But ultimately "he who should have known" is the person asking for money to buy XYZ thing. A person should be responsible for their actions.

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