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Comment by foxyv | Hacker News Reader

Owning a home wouldn't make much sense if we were building tons of affordable housing. However, with the constant artificial shortage created by cities, the rents and prices continue to rise ad infinitum.

This means, as a homeowner, I have a huge advantage over my friends who are renting and paying twice as much for a single bedroom apartment, even including maintenance costs. This will only get worse over time.

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Hundred year events are now 10 year events. I'd much rather use a diverse portfolio to move outside of the scope of a disaster and chances are good that I will actually pay less than I should for the insurance component of rent because people are irrational. For raising rents it is similar, a city is usually getting too expensive all around for someone who doesn't need to live there.

There are some retirees whose financial plan assumes that their house (the majority of their net worth) does not decrease in market value and that insurance will pay for hurricane damage. The recent condo market slump is the canary in the coal mine.

> financial plan assumes that their house (the majority of their net worth) does not decrease in market value

What is this plan? (Genuinely asking because it doesn't make sense to me.) If my (paid-off) house decreases in market value, I'm pretty sure I'm just happy because my property taxes are lower. It's not like I'm expecting to profit from its price going up, literally ever; I still need a place to live and if housing prices are going up everywhere, then selling my house means I now have the purchasing power to buy ~one house. At best, I have a larger credit amount in a HELOC but I still have to pay that off so it's not really a "financial plan".

No rent to pay. If needed sell the house to pay for medical care or nursing home care. If the price goes up sell it and move or Florida or a LCOL area.

I think the usual plan is to sell it and do like they are saying in this article. Rent a place in a cheap retirement area or live aboard a boat or something. Typical retirement stuff. What happened with my parents was the 2008 crash wiped out a lot of their retirement plans because all their investments were in real estate.

My house represents less than 10% of my portfolio cost basis. It is now 25% of my total portfolio just because it has exploded in value over the past 5 years.

Edit: In addition I get to live in it!

Disasters are just another cost (risk). You can mostly mitigate the risk by avoiding known disaster areas and buying insurance. Renting has its own risks and costs.

Overindexing on one risk or cost is not sensible.

We had an earthquake (unknown faultline so completely unpredicted) in my city Christchurch. Owning your own home had costs and insurance response here wasn't ideal. Not owning your own home would have been more costly over a decade or two.

Just after a one-off disaster is a great time to buy. Christchurch realty has really bounced back.

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