Comment by anonymars
2 days ago
> also hurts many families borrowing power and net worth
This is part of the crux, isn't it? It's a backbone of families' wealth and positioned as an investment. So there seems to be no winning: either choke off the young trying to buy or crack the nest egg of the old
See also: Bitcoin and the like (wild value fluctuations are the hallmark of a good currency)
Related article of interest: https://archinect.com/news/article/150496266/is-this-swiss-h...
> either choke off the young trying to buy or crack the nest egg of the old
The simple fact is, housing can either be affordable xor an investment[0].
Affordable means the prices are flat relative to inflation, which makes it a terrible investment. If it's a good investment, that means the price is going up faster than inflation, which quickly makes it unaffordable.
[0] I want to be clear that I'm referring to housing as an investment to mean buying a house purely for profit purposes, ie, to flip or to rent out. Buying a house to live in, rather than renting the house you live in, can be considered an "investment", but I mean to explicitly exclude that usage of "investment" in this comment.
Sure it can be an investment even with no capital gains, there's still income from charging rent.
Which still contributes to unaffordability.
A house bought for the purpose of renting out is a house that could have gone to someone who wanted to buy it. It creates upward pressure on housing prices.
I mean, I get it. There are some people that truly do want to rent a house because they know the living situation is temporary.
But we have a generation that was able to buy houses during an economic boom where you could buy a house with an entry-level job, and once that house was paid off, they started buying up houses with their extra money to rent out, and it was so lucrative that prices have skyrocketed and now people in their 20s can't buy houses without a decently lucrative job.
Obviously, there are many factors at work here, but buying or building houses with the intent to rent them out is certainly a contributor.
I just think about the fact that I bought my house in 2015 for about $340K, and it's now worth about $600K, an 80% climb in just 10 years, and I think that's absurd, not to mention a bad thing for society overall.
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