Do they mean "buying" instead of "owning"?
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
320 points (97.9% liked)
News
23353 readers
3494 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The article talks a lot about mortgages. How does the math work if you pay in full at the time of purchase?
Renting could never compare to owning, as Equity is the biggest source of wealth for the middle class in the US. Not owning equity to pass on to your kids is one of the worst mistakes you can make. IF you can afford that sort of thing.
Raising your kid(s) right is better than passing any monetary wealth on to them. If they grow up knowing that they're set and will inherit your money/house, they may get lazy and just depend on that wealth. That money will be gone after the 3rd generation.
How have we screwed up as a society, much less species, when shelter is seen as a financial investment rather than what it is, a thing we literally need to survive?
Well, as houses don't magically appear out of thin air, I guess it has been like this since we started building permanent shelter.
Until relatively recently, it wasn't that uncommon to just go and find some unused land and build a house on it. No intergenerational wealth required.
Equity is pointless when your $30,000 roof and $20,000 HVAC break at the same time and you're taking out a 20 year home equity loan to replace them. (And good luck with the $70,000 windows.)
2-4x reality, but yeah…
I don't know about that - I had my roof replaced (by insurance thankfully) about a year ago, and it was ~26k. HVAC out of pocket a couple years ago was about 15k. Not fun!
It depends on how big your house is.
I paid $10k for a 4 ton 15 SEER AC this summer (this depends on location I suppose). I paid $13k for a normal roof replacement last year.
1600 sqft house.
the homeowner could have an industrial HVAC system and a wooden roof
Kids? I'm not a fan of parasites
Not owning equity to pass on to your kids is one of the worst mistakes you can make.
"Oops, I guess I made the 'mistake' of not making enough money to afford the outrageous price of real estate. I guess my children deserve to be poor."
Or maybe we should treat housing as an public resource rather than an investment, and encourage the market to keep prices low for the sake of maintaining a healthy society.
Leaving out the last sentence in your quoting does a disservice to what they were pointing out.
They weren’t saying anyone deserves to be poor. They weren’t saying that real estate being an investment is ideal or how it should be.
The housing market is historically, currently, and prospectively an investment, and one of the only high-return, low-risk investments available to the middle class. If you can play that game and don’t, then you are making a mistake, especially if you have kids.
you divide the amount of money that it costs by the amount of dollars you would pay to rent something like that per month and then figure that's how long it'll take for you to look at a duck instead of a chicken
Then add a few years, since you'll be the one paying to replace wear items like roof, carpets, and appliances.
That's true in general. And if you assume a perfectly efficient market, yes, renting would never be cheaper than buying. On the other hand, if markets were perfectly efficient, no company would ever be able to make a profit at all.
One market distortion is that in certain times, people will actually pay a premium for renting. People aren't perfectly rational actors. Or moreover, they prioritize things beyond just simple cost. Even if buying is more expensive that renting, all costs considered, often people will pay more just for the stability and certainty that comes with home ownership.
The housing market is also distorted by all the present owners with locked-in 30-year mortgages. This has suppressed the supply of existing homes on the market. Rental companies don't get access to federally-subsidized 30 year mortgages, so they are less subject to this interest rate lock-in.
I pointed out a few things, but these are a few of many. The key thing to realize is that housing is highly illiquid, and its production, ownership, and sale is heavily regulated, taxed, and subsidized. It's a heavily regulated market. This means that the market will not always follow basic econ 101 behavior. Yes, in theory, rentals will include all costs. But that is rarely the case.
In fact, in a perfectly efficient market, it's likely that neither buying nor renting would be beneficial. If everyone acted perfectly rationally all the time, the cost of renting would exactly equal the cost of buying. And in that world, buying would never be worth it, simply because it wouldn't be worth the extra hassle to safe not a single penny.
The cost of renting or buying would be negligible if we prioritized human needs over the human want to hoard wealth
insurance and property taxes and a very large HOA fee that looks almost like a rent payment if you're in a good city
load more comments
(1 replies)
I might still not understand but... Landlords have to pay insurance as well. Why would they be the exception. They have all the same costs and also want to make a profit. How can rent be cheaper then?
Two things: first, landlords aren't entitled to a profit, and second, landlord input costs might be completely different from an owner resident.
On the first point, if the landlord's costs are $2000/month, and the market rent for that unit is $1900/month, the landlord would rather lose $100/month on a lease than lose $2000/month on a vacant property.
On the second, it might be that the landlord bought the place when it was much cheaper, or has a much lower interest rate than what is available today. So if the landlord's costs are $2000/month for a property that would now cost $4000/month at today's purchase prices and interest rates, but can rent for $3000/month at a profit to himself.
Similarly, some volume landlords can spread certain costs around and not pay nearly as much as an owner resident. It might cost $1200 to hire a plumber to do a 6-hour job, but it also might cost $150 to simply have a plumber on the payroll to do that job, if you've got enough steady work that it's cheaper to have him around.
Because markets aren't perfectly rational. If they were perfectly efficient, no company would ever be able to make a profit at all. But we don't live in that perfect Econ 101 world, and companies can make profits because inefficiencies exist in the economy. As such, sometimes rent can be more expensive than owning.
Because if you buy a house, it's just you and the bank, so you need to cover the banks risk for you as an individual, meaning higher interest rates. Larger purchases, or a group of houses are covered by different loan types, flexible rates at for example international rated plus half a point.. and that is mich cheaper. The rate might fluctuate.. but if the government strongarms the fed to keep the loans practically free, companies borrow for free plus half a point. And that is a lot of difference.
Also, the landlord is dropping that money into an asset that often appreciates in value. As long as they otherwise have cashflow to cover it, they can afford to "lose" money each month and make a big payday when they sell it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›