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Comment by frankreyes | Hacker News Reader

Because the implicit promise of housing is that it will never depreciate it's value. It's a safe bet against inflation over long run.

For normal homeowners who want to pass an inheritance to the next generation, a house is both a home and, a retirement plan, and an inheritance investment.

The big losers in cheap housing are the families that've paid a mortgage for 30 years in order to save money for the future.

Asking for cheap housing, today, is like asking for eating the cake and selling it too.

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> Asking for cheap housing, today, is like asking for eating the cake and selling it too.

We don't want cheap housing that appreciates in value so that we can use it as an investment. We want cheap housing that we can live in, period. We are being screwed out of that because other people got cheap housing and then decided it should appreciate forever, and pulled the ladder up behind them.

You are right, though, that it is impossible to have housing be affordable and an investment good. That's why we want it to stop being an investment good.

I'd never get into a 30 year mortgage knowingly that after 30 years it'd be less valuable than what I paid.

Therefore, want it or not, mean it or not, the whole point of buying a property is to get something that appreciates in value. Otherwise it'd be cheaper or better to just keep renting.

In order to stop being an investment, we need more houses, both in quantity and diversity. Lower the barrier to entry for everyone, everywhere.

You got value. You have a roof over your head and that money isn’t being burned up completely in rent. The problem is people want to enjoy having a nice house and a large return as well. There is no good coming our way from current asset owners pulling up the ladder to new home owners. Salaries cannot keep up with homeowners investment expectations.

This is a silly take in my opinion.

Something never depreciating against its value is simply bad economics. Things will always appreciate and depreciate. I don’t know who promised you this, but it sounds like you got sold a bridge in Brooklyn.

Given that, there are plenty of other ways to save, pass on an inheritance, etc. You don’t need to hoard land so that I can’t live anywhere.

I don’t really care about your 30 year mortgage, respectfully. I probably wasn’t born when you signed it - why do you get to fuck me out of having affordable housing when I wasn’t even born yet to have that fight with you?

> I don’t know who promised you this, but it sounds like you got sold a bridge in Brooklyn.

Gold keeps increasing in value, the Mona Lisa too... Econ 101.

I've already partially answer this in another comment but if you think about it: I'd never buy a property with a 30 year mortgage if I'd known it'd lose its value. I'd be better or cheaper to just rent. But then if buying is a bad choice, because what just said, then who we'd be renting from?

I'm with you, that housing should be affordable. But it seems that everyone here forgets basic Economics.

If you wouldn’t have bought it with a ridiculous amount of money if it would ever go down, maybe that’s a hint that prices are, indeed, way too high…

Anyways, gold doesn’t go up like you think it does (I recall it spent the better part of a decade getting smoked) and your house in some city isn’t a one off like the Mona Lisa.

What is "value" ?

Is gold more useful now than 20 years ago? More desirable? Has gold as a material been improved?

Most of the increase in "value" is something artificial like inflation / scarcity due to increase in population. But that's not value, that is only indeed economic forces only mildly related to gold itself.

> the implicit promise of housing is that it will never depreciate it's value

An asset with infinite growth... very sustainable system we've created isn't it?

I wouldn't say infinite growth. Boom and bust cycles have been the norm in the few couple thousand years.

But housing prices are artificially held up because of voters and taxpayers who would vote them out of office if 2008 were to be the norm, it's not a shady conspiracy.

The population curve helps ensure that the fixed amount of planet available is needing to be divvied among a continually, exponentially increasing quantity of humans.

Or, from another angle, the uninhibited spread of the human race does come with significant ecological drawbacks, at large scale. Those costs are realised, in the value of land over time - while the population curve sustains.

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