Personal Finance

repaying a loan is not 'rent-like behaviour', applying a brush that broad would paint any regular payment as 'rent-like behaviour', which is preposterous.

I'm not being broad, I'm specifically talking about what it takes to "own" a house for the vast majority of people on this website. In order to do so, you must enter into an arrangement with a bank wherein in order to have housing, a basic necessity, you must provide monthly payment, half or more of which goes directly to the bank as interest. If you do not make the payments in a timely manner, you lose your housing.

People looking to buy rather than rent are usually interested in housing security, in actually owning the place they live, rather than having to regularly pay someone else for the privilege of not dying from exposure. In reality, these arrangements make them a partial owner at best, roughly equivalent to the equity. You will learn this rapidly if you are foreclosed on.

• 'Economic rent' is a meaningless phrase, especially in this context. Rent is a concept of lease without ownership. We are literally talking about owning property. There is no rent. There is debt and burden, sure, but there is no rent.

I encourage you to inform yourself of the meaning of the term "economic rent". Spiraling land and housing values paid to real estate and banking interests is a financialized form of economic rent. The land component is one of the very oldest recognized forms, in fact.

• Equity is not a lie. It's the very simple concept of a property's worth after deduction of amounts owing. Now the nuances and application has gotten insanely out of control in miltiple countries (I'm Australian, ask me about our multigenerational housing inequities!) But the basic idea of inflation increasing cost/value is generally sound.

I didn't call equity a lie.

A rental property and a ppr are nowhere near each other, not financially, socially or emotionally.

They are quite similar, actually. You will be paying for someone else's mortgage, namely the banker's, but just a smaller amount, solely for the privilege of having your own mortgage. Giving them different names doesn't change the financial relationship in which you are paying an excess to someone else just to have housing - and giving them the ability to remove that housing based on your personal finances. These are basic and undeniable facts of how the financialized housing market operates. It did not always work this way and the history is quite revealing.

They cannot be equated, no matter how much you torture the syntax.

I didn't equate them. I'm afraid you're exaggerating.

I've said "here are some similar things" and implied that one's ownership of a house is incomplete if they have a mortgage. Not much torture of syntax going on, I think it's pretty straightforward.

Each has their place for personal preference, but they are not the same

Renters are almost always economically coerced into renting, it's not a preference. The people who do think of it as a preference are rare and are usually so rich that they don't care that they are paying more to rent than have a(nother) mortgage.

Do you have many friends that rent?