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Comment by HappyFunGuy | Hacker News Reader

Land and Homes should not suck useful capital out of our economies. Where could you spend more money and benefit less people per dollar? Our capital is better deployed in businesses where many more people benefit from many less dollar input.

This is why the SP500 craps on real estate. Because it should. Hell, the only reason real estate has had the peaks it has, is because it was subsidized by the financial sector. And as you can see, that blip of misvaluation did much more harm than good.

Business make the world better than houses do. Businesses are where you get people the best benefits. More expensive houses, to the point of unaffordable are the enemy. If you have allocated a huge portion of your assets into a non productive asset (a house), then you are part of what is wrong with the world. Stop expecting your "only benefits you house" to pay the same as "benefits 10x + more people" businesses.

P.S. liquidity, capital surplus recycling, less bid/ask spread, less fees, less counterparty risk (eviction, destruction). The capital markets pretty much crap on the real estate markets. And they should.

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This is just a massive overgeneralization about the viability of real estate as an investment vehicle, and it comes off as slightly moralistic.

I'll leave out the moralistic component. When it comes to value, some other considerations are the low interest rates we experience, the fixed 30-year loan, in the U.S. that is, and interest tax deductions. So one isn't pummeling 1M in investment that could otherwise go into a business. One is putting in 200k, even less with an FHA loan, and deducting the price of the loan.

Now we get more advanced. Buy a multi-family property, and you get rental income. This rental income is balanced against depreciation of the house, so your personal income bracket isn't affected. When you combine the tax credits, the low cost of loans, the increasing rents, the principal you're getting back, when the dust has settled you're light years ahead of those folks who rented and pumped their money into some seesaw investment vehicle like the stock market.

I pay out of pocket less than the price of a studio, and own a standalone house in one of the country's top three rental markets.

It gets better, because you can sell the property to purchase another, and defer all tax payments on the profit of the sale. 1031 exchange.

As someone else said, it's pointless to generalize nationally. We live in a big country, assuming you are US-based. I bet there's a similar dynamic in the UK or Canada, both of which have noises of a bubble.

It fails to amaze me how much the govt. and financial sector are willing to subsidise the housing market. If you leave the morality clause aside, why exactly should the US Government create tax incentives, low interest mortgages and such for housing? It was precisely the morality of enabling Americans to own a house that these benefits are present in the first place, funneling so much financial resources into the housing market rather than other investments.

I do agree with what you say though. With all the incentives that are in place, we shouldn't overgeneralize since housing can be a good investment.

What I find silly is, is the gov't really subsidizing housing in the end?

Offer a tax deduction on mortgage interest and people can afford a higher price so competition drives prices up and everyone ends up in the same place. Same with lower interest rates, etc.

One could argue there is a period where housing is easier to purchase once a new subsidy is created, but shortly after that, the market reaches equilibrium and we're back in the same place.

Just imagine if there were no housing subsidies. Housing prices would be mich lower. And yes, I know that's a gross oversimplification, but I think the effect is still there.

> What I find silly is, is the gov't really subsidizing housing in the end? > Offer a tax deduction on mortgage interest and people can afford a higher price so competition drives prices up and everyone ends up in the same place.

Exactly: it's a tax subsidy to sales agents (and others whose income depends on the transaction price). Homeowners don't get anything out of it except that their house has a larger $ on their list of assets. It doesn't help them buy a better house (since everyone in the same income bracket can afford the same house).

It's pitched as a middle class benefit though, so simplifying the system would be greeted with howls of dismay.

It does screw those of us who pay cash for our houses BTW.

It's all about morality though. It's populist practice, and most people don't care about the long-term economic consequences. They want to be able to buy a house and start a family on an average income.

Furthermore, land is one of the few intrinsic assets of a sovereign state. With their intervention, they can enable diversified, private ownership of land, rather than a widely-recognized concentration of the state's land in a few hands.

I would suggest, perhaps controversially, that individual home ownership mitigates rent seeking and capital accumulation in large firms. Some percentage of the GDP is always going to be allocated to a housing expense.

Homeowners subsequently hire contractors for maintenance and upkeep which spreads that choice around vs firm ownership which will negotiate a single contract and extract price concessions from their position.

As it is impractical to have land ownership be a public good (centrally owned (or not owned depending on your take on the whole land ownership issue) distributing ownership appears to have the best effect on overall use.

The problem is that the payment for home ownership is centralized in that your mortgage goes to a select few big banks. A more distributed form of home ownership would be more ideal but likely impossible.

The same problem exists with business loans.

It's the lack of banking competition, not mortgage.

One thing I suspect is that home construction, maintenance, and real estate sales and services are all a fantastic employment program. The suburbs were basically a postwar work program.

More people like you, increasing capacity, instead of price, are the solution. Be proud. You are the solution to high prices. I would call that 1031 exchange an unfair benefit to the already over benefitted by capital gains tax being half of income tax class though.

The world needs more houses with more people in them. That requires lower house prices, or richer people. I do not like the attitude home owners have that their future must be paid for by the pain of others not being able to afford homes. And that the profit they make on that low production asset subsidises their leisure lifestyle. Building is better than speculating, for speculating is 1 layer removed from production.

> The world needs more houses with more people in them.

Really? Is it impossible to have a fun and healthy society without a rising population? That sounds like a pyramid scheme.

Do you plan to colonize the stars, or wait for this sun to die out?

We'll lose fewer people if we colonize the planets.

We're a long way from being able to do so in a population-saving way.

Which planets and moons in our solar system could support human life? Apart from the Earth, the answer is none. We may be able to build small colonies on Mars and/or Europa but the difficulty in building sizeable colonies in/on these places would be huge (cost of transport, cost of base building and maintenance, differences in gravity, decreased sunlight, transforming local resources into forms we can more easily use, etc...), the effort would be much better spent securing the life-support mechanisms of our own planet.

Do you base your economic decisions on what will happen in 3-4 billion years?

I choose the rights of other humans to live over your aesthetic preference.

Very noble, but ever thought that thinking in terms of billion years is not really productive, and in fact can be counter-productive and destructive?

What with "thousand year" projects turning dictatorial and even "hundred year plans" looking obsolete and becoming laughing stock a few decades after they were devised.

I don't see how one can purport to be the judge on how future generations should live for them, and what the end goal should be millions of years ahead.

Besides, the Sun's death is a really minor issue. It's avoiding the heat death of the universe that will take really good planning...

I don't think he's advocating indefinite growth as much as observing that there are fewer houses than people/families whom want a house. We don't have enough housing to meet the demands of the current population.

Despite that, many projections of human population expect a peak this century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

> I'll leave out the moralistic component. When it comes to value, some other considerations are the low interest rates we experience, the fixed 30-year loan, in the U.S. that is, and interest tax deductions. So one isn't pummeling 1M in investment that could otherwise go into a business. One is putting in 200k, even less with an FHA loan, and deducting the price of the loan.

IMO, until savers max out tax advantaged retirement savings options, mortgaging a primary residence isn't close to a sound investment. And that's really what this article is about: your home is not an investment, and you'd be better off renting one (or taking out an interest only loan) and investing the principle payments you would be making into the broader market.

> you'd be better off renting one (or taking out an interest only loan) and investing the principle payments you would be making into the broader market

How do I invest the principal payments in the market when I need that money to pay my rent?

That's a useless blanket statement. There are many places where it makes sense to buy a home even if you can't max out your 401k -- places where your mortgage payments are a bit cheaper than your rent would be. You wouldn't be able to max out your 401k either way, so you might as well take the cheaper housing option, which is ownership, and put a little more into your 401k than you could otherwise.

    places where your mortgage payments are a bit cheaper than your rent would be

And where you have the stability to stay put and maintain those payments. You can't (easily) sell your house every year and move to a new one.

There's information missing from your argument, or something doesn't make sense.

I'm guessing what you meant to say was, all things being equal, investing principal payments is worse than some tax-deferred savings account.

But I'm not really sure that's ever really the tradeoff for most people? Like I stated above, I pay out of pocket for my primary residence, after tax deductions of interest, principal payments (which come back to me), and rental income from the portion of my home I rent out, LESS than what I would be paying for a tiny studio in a bad neighborhood. If I were a renter, and renting the portion of the house I live in now, I'd be paying more than triple, to some landlord who is taking advantage of these benefits. I prefer to pay myself.

Is it fair that there are all these tax deductions? I didn't even mention that improvements to the house can be factored in, and part of my utilities.

The following is a tangent. I regularly come across people who are huge proponents of savings for retirement as a priority 1. I'm in my 30's and am on my path towards independence already (though I have a way to go). The idea that I should defer risk and investment today, so that I can reap the benefits when I'm 67, is beyond comprehension to me, but it must be a personality thing.

> I'm guessing what you meant to say was, all things being equal, investing principal payments is worse than some tax-deferred savings account.

Correct.

> But I'm not really sure that's ever really the tradeoff for most people?

It's a lot harder to separate out rent from the various home owner expenses involved in a 30 year mortgage than anyone, including myself is willing to engage in in this thread. And it's rare that you'll find enough chances to either rent or buy the exact same property to come up with a solid formula for which side is better.

> The following is a tangent. I regularly come across people who are huge proponents of savings for retirement as a priority 1. I'm in my 30's and am on my path towards independence already (though I have a way to go). The idea that I should defer risk and investment today, so that I can reap the benefits when I'm 67, is beyond comprehension to me, but it must be a personality thing.

You're assuming a retirement date of 67. My spreadsheet projection suggests my investments will be earning more at age 40 than I currently live on, and at age 47 will be earning more than I currently make gross. To get there I actually have to take defer some pleasures and take risk today -- high exposure to equities volatility, etc. I personally view buying a home as the "normal," "safe" option.

The important thing to me is that the money is liquid; it's not locked in a house where transaction fees are 6 percent of the asset. I can pull a chunk of money out of my Roth IRA for anything I want at any time, and the earnings are also lootable for a downpayment should the math turn in my favor. I can also take out loans against my 403b, for down payments or for a variety of causes. My 457b is doesn't have a minimum age for distribution, I just have to employed elsewhere, providing early retirement access.

Your home investment isn't "locked"...there is an entire industry set up to let you borrow against your equity if you so wish

In the US, home ownership has already been moralised. Renting is looked down on, renters are second-class citizens.

The moralising started well before HappyFunGuy2's comment.

Actually, I don't read his comment at moralising at all -- that's a tone argument, and is frequently nonconstructive. He's parried it well, that's rare.

Addressing your low interest rates: the question is why that should have driven massive investments in investment-class assets (including real estate) rather than productive capital. Secular declines in productive return on capital investment beginning in the 1960s suggest exeptionally deep structural issues in the real, nonfinancial economy, as many have been arguing, including increasingly economists and economic analysts (see Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth, or Deloitte's "Shift Index").

Did you get special incentives on your mortgage because you are renting out all or part of your property? (E.g. buy-to-let in the UK (London at least), where it's easier to buy a house you plan to rent out than it is to buy a house to live in.) I agree your out-of-pocket costs are probably lower than renting. It sounds like you are saying everyone can and should become a landlord, but how much of a downpayment did you need to come up with for your house?

I didn't get special incentives because I'm renting out my property, not in the sense you mentioned Buy to Let in the UK. Instead, I have a few additional tax breaks: instead of paying income tax on the rental income, I can offset it against the depreciation of the property (that will increase the spread between sale price and the price I paid, which will 'go down', so when I sell it I will report higher profit ); I can tax deduct the mortgage interest like any homeowner already can ; I can tax deduct house wide expenses such as heating and common utilities, including repairs to the rental unit (and even linens and furniture if I AirBnB it but that's a different tax schedule). I can declare loss when a unit is not rented. I used a special loan called an FHA loan which meant I needed less than 20% down payment, but I was punished with a high insurance from the bank. I recently refinanced out of that into a normal mortgage, because the value of my property went up and the 20% figure magically became true. And most of us here (unlike in the UK) have 30 year fixed-rate mortgages.

If I rented out my units and moved out, I'd make 2K a month over and above my mortgage payment and taxes. I regard the negativity towards housing above with a lot of amusement. I could withstand a housing crash, a job loss, and a lot more now. I am much more worried about a fire, or crime in my neighborhood, or construction next door.

Housing bubbles (where prices outpace incomes) are particularly damaging for the long term survival of a civilization because they hit it where it really counts: family formation.

Celebrating high housing prices is the civilizational equivalent of giving a toast as you sit down to a banquet of your seed corn.

I largely agree with your statements. and especially with your overall tone and thesism. However, everyone needs a home. And it's foolish to believe that only businesses should own homes. How much "useful capital" should one expend on such a critical, life sustaining thing?

I agree with you. Which is why we need more affordable houses, and less unaffordable houses. Because many in this world have more than they need, you can get the important, shelter by renting, lucky us! We can affordably live in things that took thousands of man hours of labor, and more capital, for a low monthly fee.

One day, when robots build houses, owning can replace renting. Or when everyone stops the cargo cult of HOUSES MUST GO UP IN PRICE OR LIFE SUXORZ!!!

It's funny how owning something distorts ones perception. What else in the world MUST GO UP IN PRICE! Notice I say price and not value, for it is truly only the price going up. Their utility remains static, or decreases as the view is blocked by high rises.

Paperclips must go up in price! I own some!

> What else in the world MUST GO UP IN PRICE!

Pretty much everything. The stagnation and zero inflation of many economies is a problem.

Therein lies the rub: infinite growth cannot be sustained in any finite system. This fosters an environment where real value & perceived value diverge and balloons occur...and pop. Beany Baby Marketing 101.

Infinite growth is possible and it is what our societies aim for. But, in its deepest, it is a pseudo-growth, because prices rise, but eventually salaries must eventually rise again to match the prices.. So, in the end, everything gets back to the same relative levels!

That isn't growth -- real increase in wealth, as Adam Smith defines it ("the annual labour and produce of the Nation"), or as mismeasured to a lesser degree by GNP / GDP -- but monetary inflation.

Some research finds that growth has limits: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

I concur, it is what developing economies strive for and what developed(sic) economies strive to maintain. Anything is possible, it is the methodology that provides the results(good & bad). This philosophy has been the acme of societal success since blood-letting was believed to be a cure all & the earth was thought to be the center of the universe. The tangible reality is, higher & higher margins are required to achieve that growth. Whether this is achieved by tech, innovation, exploitation or inflation is moot, what is certain is always more has it's costs & limits.

The problem is this is far removed from the world that we live in.

Here in the UK, at least in the south/east where the jobs are, monthly rents tend to be the same order of magnitude as monthly mortgage payments on a 25-year loan for a home of the same size in the same location.

The choice therefore is not between low rent or high purchase cost; it's between making about the same payment for 25 years then never again, or making it for your whole life (while your landlord keeps it for their nest egg).

Since you have to live somewhere, if you are able to get a loan at all, and barring expectation of massive disaster, buying seems to be a no-brainer.

Two things could change that equation. We could add vast numbers of rental properties to the market, enough that the competition forces down rent prices by a very significant amount. The private sector is certainly not going to shoot itself in the foot in this way, and conservative UK governments have been pushing hard in the other direction, so this seems unlikely.

The other alternative would be to reduce the need for homes in expensive places by having more people live together, in cheaper areas. We're seeing this happen by default now as young people are priced out of the market, but widespread telecommuting has the potential to make this a plausible deliberate choice rather than a forced decision.

No idea how the US situation compares, natch

In the UK, very few mortgage deals have fixed rates further out than 5 years. So as a buyer you're also taking interest rate risk.

Sure, this hasn't bitten anyone for the last 20 years, but it happened in the 80s.

IMO, the best solution is neither of the two you mentioned. I'd say the best possible solution would be found in the increased availability of microhomes (to buy, not to rent).

It tackles two problems in one go. First of all, many more people would be in a position to buy a home without taking on a mortgage. They would then be in a better place to save their money in order to move to a bigger place (if they so wished). Secondly, because mortgages would no longer be as great a requirement to purchase a house, mortgage lenders would be incentivised to offer people attractive mortgage rates in order to encourage people to borrow money.

In addition, microhomes need not result in large compromises. There are some great microhome designs on the market that offer attractive features whilst still coming in at a lower price than most existing UK houses. I quite like the Dwelle designs, but there are plenty of other options available.

http://www.dwelle.co.uk/

As a side note, I have a book on economics called 'The Grip of Death'. The title of the book comes from the meaning of the word mortgage, which I found interesting... Mort = Death, Gage = Pledge ('Grip' is accurate if the pledge becomes an obligation). I personally believe long term mortgage arrangements to have a tendency to damage personal enjoyment of life, so the name seems apt.

How do these compare for longevity to regular houses? I actually seriously considered possibilities like narrowboats and static caravans when I left uni, but was put off by the need to basically get a new one (or spend the equivalent amount patching up the old one) every 10 years or so - it doesn't seem much of an improvement?

That said, in parts of the world (cough Japan) it is expected that you demolish the old building and build your own when you buy a property (and you build cheap and light, accordingly), so perhaps this is another UK-centric concern.

Another UK consideration: we have a tendency here to build housing outwards rather than upwards. In a country with relatively little land, if we're considering alternatives, IMO it's well worth considering more high-rise buildings in place of low-density sprawl - not only do they not carry the stigma elsewhere in the world that they do in the UK, but they're even now losing it in the UK; check out the "luxury apartment" blocks going up like mushrooms in the London docklands and around rail stations in sleeper towns.

Where do I put my microhome?

The bulk of the cost of buying a house in the UK seems to be land price. In fact, those microhomes are _more_ expensive buildings than a traditional build - from this calculator (http://www.jewson.co.uk/working-with-you/for-self-builders/p...) the price of a 100m2 build might be ~112k, compared to the microhome 70m2 'lifetime' model.

Microhomes are a nice idea, but they wouldn't help me in East of England.

> The choice therefore is not between low rent or high purchase cost; it's between making about the same payment for 25 years then never again, or making it for your whole life (while your landlord keeps it for their nest egg).

> No idea how the US situation compares, natch

Speaking as a US citizen in a small midwest city, it's basically the same in most areas.

I can rent a 2bed/1car/700sqft apartment for (X) dollars per month. Or I can own a 4bed/2car/1800sqft single-family home for the same (X) dollars per month, on a fixed 30yr mortgage.

The main difference (besides the tons of extra space) is that the apartment is guaranteed to cost 5-15% more every single year for life. But the house mortgage payment only rises maybe 1% each year.

If I leave an apartment, I have to pay them one or two thousand dollars (on top of any rent owed). If I leave my house, it's equity usually covers any realtor listing fee and gives me a few thousand to cover moving expenses.

I hate home ownership, and no one really does condos in my state, so renting is the only other option. But I can do basic math. Even if we move every four years, it's still much cheaper to own rather than buy, in most situations.

---

Every single person and organization in the entire nation, is doing everything possible to inflate housing costs as high as possible, in literally every market. Owning is the only way I know of to keep my head above water -- otherwise, I'd be fighting the entire national economy every day, for life.

> Notice I say price and not value, for it is truly only the price going up. Their utility remains static, or decreases as the view is blocked by high rises.

Interesting observation, does make sense. I suspect a strong relationship to the land the house is built on. The value of the house itself should go down indeed, because the house deteriorates from the moment it is built.

However, the house makes that land usable and the land underneath it might become more valuable, because more people want it in dense areas.

Accordingly, house prices fall in less desired areas.

Robots building houses wouldn't solve the problem. The cost of construction makes up a small part of the price of a house or apartment in attractive cities like SF, NYC, London etc.

Separately, I'm not sure I understand your point about price vs. value. In SF or London, apartments have high value (evidenced by people willing to pay high rent to live in them). Maybe in some places (Beijing?) apartment prices are hard to justify based on rental yield. But what makes you think home prices in general are divorced from home 'values'? What would make prices go down that would not also not decrease whatever measure of 'value' you're using?

I'm not quite sure what your point is. Nobody should own a house because it requires sinking too much capital into that could be better spent? While you may have some point there, that's not really realistic. I own a home and I didn't sink a lot of assets into it because it was going to be a great investment, but because I wanted to own a home.

Some of the smarter among us own homes, because they can delay gratification, and save. That same saving and delayed gratification could be used to put money into a business that benefits others, instead of a home, which benefits basically only them and their close family. Not only do they misallocate that capital, while being the intelligent class that can actually run a successful business, or service, which benefits others. That's just bad thing 1.

Bad thing 2 is that they cop an attitude, and affect legislation which causes their "investment" in owning a home to rise in price. Executed by preventing competition (zoning laws) and being more costly for everyone else to buy, because they demand and fight for it. *Homestead tax exemption, etc. Their choice to own a home makes them want others to have a harder time to get what they themselves have, through the vehicle of higher prices, and tax benefits to the capital class.

Thus intelligent, useful people, become cockblockers. Houses must become more and more unaffordable for everyone else, because they happen to own one. :( How selfish. Sadly, the idea that high house prices screw over more people than they benenfit is undermarketed, and its impossible to teach a man a thing he profits by not understanding... We end up in a world where no young person can afford to own the home they live in. And if you try to build some new supply, the local captured regulatory agency, vetos you. The zoning board of people who already have nice houses, cock blocks you. Not in my backyard!

Stop cock blocking. Stop expecting your future to be paid for by your non productive, benefits only you "asset." Go forth and benefit others at scale if you desire riches.

I'm not sure I can grasp why you're so negative about house ownership and you seem to be rather in some weird ideological cage that doesn't let you see the whole picture. Firstly you have something akin to the broken window fallacy going on: if I buy a house someone else (often a company) gets that cash and can invest it. The money does not disappear, and if I had taken the same loan (which I likely wouldn't have received without the house title as guarantee that the bank gets its money back) to start a company or invest in stocks there's a much higher probability of failure than that my house disappears. So it's a thrifty investment.

In particular as secondly, house ownership means I'll save on rent, rather than to pump money into someone else's pocket I'm accumulating the value. It's a simple calculation that this is in most cases in my benefit if I expect to be in the same spot for 5+ years. Real house value could even decrease over time, the rental costs I'm saving could still make it a good investment.

Thirdly, first house owners are unlikely to try to influence policy just to increase house value. Not sure how you can have such an idea, for most owners this would be unlikely to be worth the time& effort required just to increase house value 1℅ or so. But you can be sure they will fight for their quality of life (think parks, no planes, etc). That coincides with house value but for most average citizens the only (conscious/driving) reason to affect local policy is quality of life.

And lastly I think you're somehow too far from reality if you argue it is in an individual's interest to serve the wider economy. I'm not going to use my money just to benefit an imaginary wider economy - what is the benefit then for me? Why be rich if life sucks (and why risk all my money just to start a company if I have already a good income & life?) Do I live just to nudge Gdp up by 0.00001℅ over my lifetime? Or do I want a healthy life, a garden for my kids to play, etc.

Buying a house is a very rational decision and I"m not sure what you can see as selfish (in particular considering point 1). Your argument really is somewhat absurd and I find it hard to believe you make all your life decisions or buying decisions with such an approach (leasing your laptop? Living in a polygamous commune as keeping an attractive partner to yourself would keep potential value from the rest of humanity?).

agree. home ownership is about creating wealth for yourself instead of making the landlord rich. There are many millennials who are living with their parents instead of pissing away money every month for rent, and then using the saved money from their job to buy a home, achieving financial independence. With renting, you're never are able to achieve independence, since you're constantly draining money, and the rate of rent, especially since 2011, has far, far exceed inflation.

Are you really saving by owning a home vs renting? Your equity could be invested elsewhere plus you are spending money on maintenance, which you don't fully recoup when you sell. You are locking up equity in a non diversified asset. There are non financial benefits of home ownership, but I'm not sure it makes financial sense

over the long run (>5 years) the data suggests buying is better than renting

Which data? Do you have a link?

here's the classic post on the topic http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/04/rent-or-buy.html

I believe the calculations aren't quite correct. The return on the S&P is higher than the return on housing in a typical market. That's the whole point of the parent article. Consider a typical market like Chicago area. Prices still haven't recovered from the housing bust

Remember that the housing burst and the recovery after it aren't representative of a typical market.

Why ? Assets can go up and down in value, depending on the supply/demand dynamics. Actually it's quite representative

If you look at historic trends, the housing burst and the drop and raise in home prices was specifically atypical -- you can pretty clearly see it on a graph. This abnormal behavior is why we have specifically given a name for it and why you and I both know exactly which housing burst we're talking about, otherwise it would just be the normal background trend.

The normal background trend is for home prices to rise at about the rate of inflation. We don't really have a special name for this other than "appreciating asset".

no, you are thinking about it wrong. housing as a whole rises at the rate of inflation. The particular house you purchase can easily rise not at the rate of inflation but less, due to depreciation and idiosyncratic factors. If you want to invest in housing, then buy reits or invest in private real estate funds. That doesn't have to involve buying a house. As to the bust, it is only atypical if you think about housing in isolation. If you think about it as just one of many assets trading in the economy, then you will realize that busts in asset prices occur all the time, so it's not some sort of one off that can never happen.

> Your equity could be invested elsewhere

How could I invest the equity elsewhere, other than the down payment? I have a monthly payment for housing either way, and with rent it will be larger unless the local market is crashing.

> plus you are spending money on maintenance, which you don't fully recoup when you sell

Owners and renters both pay maintenance and taxes. The difference is that owners pay those bills directly and renters pay them indirectly. The idea that owners pay things renters don't is a fallacy.

The renters often pay less maintenance than the owners. It's true that they pay some of it - but not all. The idea that the owners can pass along full maintenance costs in the form of rent is also a fallacy Yes, the downpayment. The downpayment could be invested in a diversified basket of assets instead.

> The renters often pay less maintenance than the owners. It's true that they pay some of it - but not all. The idea that the owners can pass along full maintenance costs in the form of rent is also a fallacy.

If that was the case the landlord would be taking a loss on the property, since rent is the only appreciable form of revenue the landlord gets for the property. How do you think the landlord can avoid passing on the full cost of maintenance and still make money? Don't forget that the landlord still has to pay some amount of maintenance even when the property is unoccupied.

> Yes, the downpayment. The downpayment could be invested in a diversified basket of assets instead.

So it really depends on how much the down payment is then, and how much the down payment reduces the cost of housing. You can't make a blanket statement either way.

Landlords fight like hell to avoid doing maintenance. Why do you think that is, if they could simply pass along full cost to the renters? The reality is, maintenance is something they take a partial loss on

They fight like hell to avoid doing maintenance for the same reason any low-margin business avoids doing anything that isn't absolutely necessary: to protect their slim profit margins. They are not taking a "loss" on maintenance; maintenance is one of many costs of doing business and one slummier landlords try to minimize as much as they can get away with.

There is no fallacy here. For all maintenance done, either the renters cover the costs of the maintenance or the landlord loses money on the property. Trying to avoid performing the maintenance in the first place doesn't change that.

my point is that the renters do not fully cover the cost of maintenance for landlords, only partially. Landlords cannot raise rent by the amount equal to the maintenance they have to perform, the rent hikes in a market are a function of supply/demand of renters. Otherwise, rents would rise in places with old houses, independent of peoples desire to live in those places and that obviously doesn't happen

I want more people to own homes. I want more houses contructed. I want lower house prices. I want more home owners. Please do not conflate my distates for homeowners greed for a distate in home builders. Home building is great. Home owning is passing the buck around.

    I want more people to own homes.

Yet

    my distates for homeowners

and

    Home owning is passing the buck around.

I don't really follow your argument.

> This is why the SP500 craps on real estate.

This is a limited view. For this one needs to include debt opportunity and tax. Try and get a $1mil loan at 95% LVR on shares. Good luck with that. With property this is often fine. Property lets you work at high leverage points due to its safer nature. In this way your $100k of shares might have a higher return but once you leverage to a $1mil house at that capital level, the smaller percentage return pays more overall.

Also in many countries you dont pay tax on residential property you live in which adds 15%-40% value as you take profits.

Completely agree on the heavy deployment of capital in many of today's property markets. The business and society cost of high house pricing is not discussed enough. I feel its a great way to stagnate an economy if we continue this.

Businesses are where you get people the best benefits.

Entrepreneurship has a 90-95% chance of failure...Bay Area homes have doubled since 2011..the choice seems obvious to me (provided you have enough money to buy a Bay Area home).

Business make the world better than houses do.

You're comparing apples an oranges here. Businesses very often lease real estate..guess who ends up making most of the money in that deal..

More expensive houses, to the point of unaffordable are the enemy.

Where is the incentive to invest in urban development if there is no return. If a private equity firms wants to buy a bunch of blighted homes and improve them, why should they not profit from the land value?

> Land and Homes should not suck useful capital out of our economies.

They don't. The money you invest in them doesn't disappear into a Scrooge McDuck cash vault. The seller then spends or invests it.

Also, an asset that servers as collateral for a loan serves to creates the money for the loan.

I agree that homes don't make for great investments for many reasons, but they aren't a drag on the economy.

You've ignored opportunity costs.

Consider my Tiny House project. I estimate it shall cost me 50-70k. The average house price in my area is quarter of a million euros and the total life long cost of a loan brings that up to half a million euros.

Instead of working for an employer to obtain either 180k (if I save) or 450k (if I borrow) I can begin my own business instead.

What is the difference between a small business and a home? My home "employs" people (I just had two roofers earn $4k doing work on my home yesterday), it requires investment and risk...it doesn't generate a cash flow, but 90% of startups don't either.

Lets flip this around...if two people came to Palo Alto in 2009 with a $2 million fund, one doing a starup and the other buying a home...the one doing a startup would have a 90% chance of failure with a 0.1% chance of tripling their money...the other who purchased a home would have had a 99% chance of at least doubling their money, and a 100% chance of making at least a 25% gain. Who is the smart one?

> What is the difference between a small business and a home?

The difference between consumption and investment?

I want a nice shelter, not a 3 bedroom house I don't need or want on the off chance I'll sell at a profit some day. I'm not interested in that.

> Lets flip this around...if two people came to Palo Alto in 2009 with a $2 million fund, one doing a starup and the other buying a home...the one doing a startup would have a 90% chance of failure with a 0.1% chance of tripling their money...the other who purchased a home would have had a 99% chance of at least doubling their money, and a 100% chance of making at least a 25% gain. Who is the smart one?

I could give a similar example of literally any class of assets.

Investing is not arithmetic. These things aren't baked in like Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics. Corelations can look solid for decades and then totally disappear.

I can tell you for free though, that my generation and the ones behind it cannot afford your houses.

Most of the tiny house stuff I've seen seems like absolutely absurd waste of land and at a large scale would introduce worse secondary problems than any suburb today does.

Legitimately, why should I care. It solves a number of problems for me.

I don't live in a city, everybody around me already uses private means to obtain water, sewerage, waste disposal and even power and I'll be doing the same.

Not every solution has to be scalable. In fact the majority are not.

So what do you suggest I do in my mid-20s: buy a house or stay a tenant for life? Why shouldn't I buy a house?

Here is a rent v. buy calculator:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calc...

Unfortunately, if you play around with it, you will see that future appreciation is one of the most sensitive variables in the equation. My guess is that housing will decline in price, potentially quite seriously, but no one has a crystal ball.

I own right now, but I would not buy right now. If it were convenient, I would sell.

Where I live, it's a buyer's market. We have plenty of choice. I can live with not making money on my investment, or even losing a bit, as long as it means losing less than I'd have lost renting.

EDIT: Wow. I have just used the NYT's calculator with numbers to the best of my knowledge (assuming 0% house price growth). Per them, I should rent. I'm paying $840 in mortgage plus about $180-200 in utilities etc. Their estimate is that I should rent if I can rent a house for less than $1800 a month. That's definitely possible here. Way to make me rethink my investment!

If I assume a 3% growth in house prices, I should definitely buy, by a 300$ margin.

Buy a house if you want. It can be much better than being a tenant for practical reasons - less moving around to keep getting a good deal, not having to constantly play games with your landlord and brokers for new leases, basic repairs and the like, getting the mortgage interest tax deduction and all the rest.

Just don't kid yourself that it's an 'investment', don't sink in more money than you need to.

Remember, we are all born with short position of one residence, and buying a single residence takes us back to being flat. Buying any more than we need to is going long on housing as an asset class, which may not be the best idea.

There is undersupply in houses in good markets. This is why I invest in a house in a good market. There is oversupply in most business categories. This is why I would rather invest in a house.

What are these business needs that will be met if I reallocate my capital? Do we need another car company? Can Amazon.com not raise enough capital to grow AWS? etc etc

People who invest in homes in good markets understand supply and demand pretty well.

For most people, a home is an investment they understand which delivers utility every day they live in it and augments their retirement when they downsize. It isn't very complicated.

I think the subtext here, for better or for worse, is that regular folks have made a lot of money off of real estate since the 2009 crash. Startup people like to think of themselves as smart, and it bothers many of them that regular folks have actually done quite well while they are rolling the dice. Smart people are supposed to have better outcomes than regular folk, apparently.

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