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Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

While I don’t think you deserved downvotes, as there was no “superior” attitude to your philosophy on loans, it’s just not realistic for a large variety of people (ther very vast majority).

How many people can buy a home, cash? Should everyone else be renters in perpetuity? All sorts of things people might miss out on, from pets, to country living etc, because they can’t lay down between $100,000 and $300,000+ to buy a home “without a loan”.

(I realize that there are a number of caveats to my statements, not everyone has to live in the most expensive part of the country, but not everyone can live in rural Iowa or Detroit, and not everyone has to have a pet, I’m just talking of how for very many people, the “no loans ever” attitude is not realistic).

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This isn't exactly a rebuttal, but how much are housing prices inflated by the fact that everybody's getting loans? How much would those $300k houses be worth without the mortgage industry? It seems to me that the housing market is caught in a self-reinforcing cycle where mortgages inflate prices, and now nobody can get on the treadmill. That doesn't seem like a unassailably good thing, or something that should just be accepted as "the way it is." (It may be the best of all possible worlds, but I've seen no evidence of that personally.)

> How many people can buy a home, cash? Should everyone else be renters in perpetuity?

Currently renting by choice vs. "buying". One might argue that when you "buy" a home with a mortgage, you very much still are a renter - you're just renting money. Potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, for 15-30 years.

There is a vast difference between renting an apartment vs buying a home on credit.

When I rent, I can't do anything to the building without the landlord's approval. They may prohibit painting, but when I buy a house I can paint all I want. A landlord may limit what I can do with the ground around my "property", while "owning" a home means I can dig all I want. Having a home means I can have as many pets as I want without incurring extra rent, too. I can also choose my own parking situation, which is harder when renting.

So no. I reject the idea that having a mortgage is the same as renting. Owning a home, even while paying a mortgage, offers a lot more freedom, of course while still owing money to someone. But it is fundamentally different from renting.

Most importantly, for a home, your costs are mostly fixed, assuming a fixed rate mortgage. Taxes can change, but you get a voice in that.

A landlord can wake up and raise rent arbitrarily in the vast majority of the US. It make take up to a year for that to take effect, but it still can. Owning shields you from that. Or from the landlord moving in upstairs neighbors who have a young kid.

> Owning a home, even while paying a mortgage, offers a lot more freedom, of course while still owing money to someone.

Please explain this again. If you buy a home, you have a large illiquid asset, which makes it really difficult to relocate for jobs and downsize living situations if you lose your job all of a sudden. If I lost my job, I'd instantly move into a studio apartment and break the lease I currently have if I wasn't month to month.

Contrast that to owning a house, where if you lose your job, you have to sell your house and move, which takes longer than breaking a lease. Also, you'll have to pay brokers' fees and such. Also, you're stuck in your current job market. That might be ok for the Bay Area (and other places), because there are plenty of jobs here. But if you took a job at Anheuser Busch and decide you hate it, you're stuck with a large liability in a market that is not doing great, few other jobs, and a mortgage you still have to pay.

Plus housing prices can go down also. You're stuck with a monthly payment for something that's not even worth as much as you paid for it or even owe on it, and you cannot refinance.

But sure, you get to paint the walls whatever color you like, as long as it's not visible in the street and the HOA (if you have one) approves.

>Please explain this again.

I think you understood it right the first time. you're just deliberately choosing to miss the point.

To put it in your snarky-ass tone: Contrast owning a home to renting an apartment. Your landlord could double your rent, or choose to stop leasing. They can put off maintenance while forbidding you from working on it yourself. They can show you an awesome demo unit then give you something else with worse appliances and a terrible paint job and now you're stuck with it. You can have a noisy neighbor move in and the only thing separating you from them is one paper-thin wall. You can pay tons more more for dedicated parking or roll the dice and hope someone doesn't steal the last spot out front. You're completely at the mercy of the housing market: if the market goes up, no matter what you have to pay the new prices when your lease is up, since every place near your work will be raising rates too. And now you're paying double a mortgage for a shitty one-bedroom with a smoker living across the hall drifting the stink into your home.

But at sure, you can pay 3x your rent to break your lease and move to another state whenever you want, since normal people totally do that all the time.

Why do you compare "owning a home" to "renting an apartment"? Why don't you compare "renting a single family house" to "owning a home?" If you take away the obviously non-comparable "house" versus "apartment" aspect, it's a better comparison. You aren't comparing renting to owning, you are comparing apartments to houses.

That's funny, considering you're just setting up strawmen targets and knocking them down. The point was that renting gives you more freedom than buying.

> To put it in your snarky-ass tone

How was my tone snarky?

Also, it's all economics. If the rent is way higher than the mortgage, sure you go ahead and buy. If not, you rent.

Yeah, people have different situations. Sometimes renting is the best choice, sometimes buying is. Each comes with it's pros and cons. One person may value the freedom to do what they want with their home, another might value the other freedom of mobility more.

I own, and am in a situation where if I lost my job, I wouldn't have to sell the house. I love not having to ask permission for every change I make. I really love not stressing over the damage my dog does to the floors. The scratches add character as far as I'm concerned. A landlord would probably ding me for thousands to repair it all.

Also, the rent can never be raised on me. Nor can I be told I have to leave because the owner is going to sell the property.

The point is that owning property constrains freedom rather than enhances it.

If you take out debt you owe somebody something. You can't just do what you want.

It constrains some freedom, delivers others.

You gain other freedoms that you don’t have when you’re not the owner. You can build, paint, have messy pets, smoke weed, knock out a wall, be a landlord yourself, and rip out the carpet. You gain some freedoms in exchange for giving up others.

Often times rent is more expensive than owning a home (through a 30-year mortgage, for instance). So, in the end, you end up with an (appreciating) asset vs just having somewhere to live for X years.

Of course, and this is a huge reason for some people, you're kinda stuck there, unless you want to do the buy/sell dance to move around.

Don't most landlords do a credit check for renters?

Affordability checks and references. Landlords are not providing credit.

The lease is a loan for the term of the lease in the amount of the total rent, coupled with other grants and responsibilities.

Um, actually a landlord. And yes, we definitely do credit checks.

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