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Comment by _carbyau_

5 days ago

> So when a new home owner buys something and suddenly the value drops $100k and the bank wants the money I do feel slightly sorry for them.

I feel a little sorry for them but they are not missing the money total of "the whole house". They can sell the house, have a shitty $100k debt, a tale of woe, and hopefully a better idea of how to go about spending money they didn't have.

I feel there are too many people who "borrow as much as they can for the best house they can get" rather than being sensible about their money and using a mortgage as a hedge against paying rent and future rent raises. Some of them make it, some of them don't.

we’re talking about wiping out most of the stored wealth of roughly a quarter of all homeowners here. and they cannot take that home with them when a new job opportunity comes up or worse get fired/sick.

this sounds more like a suicide pact than a plan.

  • Is it great? No! It's certainly not an outcome I would wish for anyone. I'm not a monster.

    But there's two things here:

    1. allowing people freedom to make their own choices.

    2. the dangers of borrowing large sums of money

    Adding those two together in a free(for some notion of free) market means there will be losers. In this case, the outcome sucks but it isn't like they lost their life in a car crash.

    If you start guaranteeing outcomes... that way madness lies.