My take is that Bitcoin could offer those not wanting to landlord a means of long term wealth preservation that allows them to get out of real estate altogether. The ones that want to be in that business will stay. But the premium on real estate could get tamped down considerably, offering better rates all around. Inflation isn’t going away, but the premium could lessen over coming decades. Pushing property to its functional value. Very slowly. Real estate moves very slowly.
Discussion
Why's it so slow? Are real estate investors just retarded or what? Idk how anyone can see bitcoin and then still think the real estate game looks good.
Personally, I'm hoping it causes widespread abandonment of suburbia. Lawn/garage neighborhoods are depressing shitholes.
Most people who own their own in the UK have taken more than 20 years to pay down their mortgage.
When you stay in the same place for a long time you build an emotional attachment - neighbours, memories of raising your children, memorable family gatherings.
Downsizing is neither easy nor cheap.
When these people die, they will likely pass on their homes to their loved ones.
One could argue that Bitcoiners are attached to their stash of satoshis in a similar way to how boomers are attached to their homes.
I don't think boomers are attached to their homes. They're using reverse mortgages now to finance perpetual cruises.
The British pensioners I know live quite frugally.
That's good news. Maybe the UK isn't as borked as I thought. Here in the US, 70-80 year olds live in houses 4x bigger than they need, have brand new RVs and boats in their driveways, and spend half the year on cruises, while paying "house sitters" (millenials with degrees they were never allowed to use because there's no jobs in their specialized fields) to take care of their pets while they're away. And the whole economic and political system is designed to perpetuate this absurdity.
A bit of a tangent, but this shows how hard it is to be objective. What i thought was well reasoned analysis may just be misleading insights derived from personal observations
True. But personal observations generally lead to better analysis than impersonal observations, since the latter involves trusting someone else. All the information coming at you is actually more like noise, and it becomes information via your own perspective finding a way to orient it to your own observations. Or, as I just heard Professor Vervaeke say in a video, "I can't be unbiased, that's not a thing."
Speaking specifically about the US landlord/investor portfolio equity migration, these are people with low time preference by default. They are not inclined to jump from one lifeboat to another until the other is proven and necessary, or the diversification is warranted; and even then it’s not a leap but a gradual calculated migration of equity. Many of these people won’t risk a migration at all, and will die first, leaving the portfolio to the children to rebalance. My perspective tells me that it takes five to ten years for the migration to really start, and I suspect it takes around 8 to 12 years for there to be a momentum that sizably impacts the real estate market, and 20 to 25 years for it to find a new equilibrium between the asset classes. There are markets that will get impacted more quickly than real estate. It’s just slower than we think.
But for US individuals as homeowners, if you want to buy for you to live in it, and you just can’t yet swing it, just stack sats, focus on earnings and spend way less than you earn while increasing earning and stacking sats. Patience and sats will cure a great deal with time.
Sounds like bitcoiner culture could remain relevant for a long time. I like that. I don't like thinking about how it could disappear if bitcoin stops being a niche thing