Hardly everyone understands 'owning a house' as millionaire-level wealth. Which is why people cheer the policy on until they realize it is them who is being shaken down.
Owning a house where your equity in it is over a million is absolutely wealthy.
In the US itself (?) lol
I disagree with the comment and entire existence of the person to whom you are replying, but they aren't wrong about $1m actually not being as big or watershed a number as it used to be.
A basic middle-class house in just about any part of the country that's worth living in is going to be $1m, plus or minus 200k.
I'm not coming at this from a rural perspective. I live in the greater NYC area. I have friends in NYC. They make a lot of money and live very close to Grand Central, and even they don't live in $1M properties.
I have lived in both NYC and Southern California, and I was mostly thinking about SoCal, where in general one assumes a basic middle-class house in a reasonably decent area is going to cost $1m. Do they always? Not necessarily, but even fairly modest houses like my parents house now exceed $1m in value easily.
Out of curiosity, do your friends own condos? Doesn't even a studio condo on the UES cost at least like $600k base (i.e. not counting any fees related to the sale, nor any ongoing HOA)?
Help me understand your comment. Do you think the country is only made up of like, 3 big coastal cities? Do you think the only houses worth living in are several thousand square feet in only the coolest parts of town? I want to understand what you think the country actually looks like, here.
Subjective, obviously. My view is that I wouldn't live almost anywhere outside of one of the major coastal cities in a blue state. Certainly nowhere in "flyover country".
I too would only live in a small subset of the country (a different, but not opposite, subset from you). But I would never do something as petty/hostile as describe those places as "the only places worth living."
> you are using the general term "worth living in" to describe places you would live,
In general, anyone who uses the phrase is going to mean it subjectively.
But--there is a somewhat objective measure: property prices :)
And they are all higher in blue state coastal cities than in buttfuck Trump-loving nowhere.
Only ~30% of home owners own their outright.
~60% own 40% of the house or less.
I'd argue that you can't own more than ~92% of a home, because it costs a lot to sell a house...
The "average" homeowner moves every ~7 years in the US, and this is heavily skewed to people with less equity - the people who outright own typically have stayed put 20+ years.
So "owning" a million dollar home means anything from: you put 3.5% down, and you're currently underwater cause prices went down in a lot of the US (i.e. you are literally own NEGATIVE equity)... to you actually have $1m in equity.
I "own" a $1.2m home. I really only own about $425k of it. If I had to sell it, that typically costs close to 9% - so I'd be lucky to get $300k.
The person underwater who put 3.5% down on a home could easily have -$250k if they had to sell... So the idea that everyone who "owns" a $1m house is "rich" is a bit strange...
I mean, in general, people who "own" $1m houses are not destitutely poor, but that's about as far as you can extrapolate.
You can put 3.5% down for a $1m house in places where ~50% of the population lives.
At current interest rates, no, you can't qualify, but at interest rates where people bought most of these houses... Yes, the median person could afford it (in those areas).