You think real estate is an investment?
Discussion
It’s mostly a place to live and a place to dump money
I was just talking about this irl. After taxes, insurance and interest payments, 'buying' a house is really just renting for cheaper.
Renting is cheaper in the mass outlook
Yeah? I dunno. Maybe that depends on when you bought.
I believe the metric is same year comparison. After owner expenses the difference gets invested.
You get your principle back when you sell, even with zero price appreciation.
Let me know how that equates after expenses.
With modest appreciation, most maintenance and improvements may be offset.
You end up comparing interest/taxes/insurance to rent costs.
With my experience it's a fucking headache and time killer.
The sale eats up profit. Unless it's your forever home re estate is a shit coin.
Especially pop up city units or dwellings
Yeah, its a shitcoin. I still wouldn't trade it for rent though.
There is no comparison between renting and owning. They are entirely different ways of life.
What I'm pointing out in the OP is, just because the price is going up doesent mean the value or underlying cost is going up. What is going up is the cost of living, and inflation is driving the value of your wages down, and this is why you can't afford a house. Its not because the cost of housing is going up.
It is safe to say productivity in the US has been largely flat since 2008, this means the value of the "best" companies in the US has also been flat. If you measure the world in terms of S&P500, this breaks the illusion of prices going up, and the reality of our earning power plummeting over the past 20 years.
To measure everything in bitcoin isn't quite fair given its obvious rising value. Bitcoin's value has risen faster than everything else, therefore its an equally, but oppositely, bad measuring stick to diagnose the problem. Oil and energy obviously is a manipulated market, the "value" has continued to decline in order to maintain political control. They are able to do this because the cost of production is marginal compared to value. In other words, the price to the US is mostly arbitrary. This is why the dollar price has been mostly stable.
Food, on the other hand, has gone down in value, while rising in terms of dollars, because we have opened up sourcing food from the globe. Historically that has been impractical due to a lack of preservation technology and a higher cost of transportation both of which are downstream of the cost of energy, this alongside infinite trade deficits and the dollar milkshake effect. All combined competition, it's amazing any food at all can be produced within our borders. This is a testimony to the power of American resilience. But nothing in this world is infinite, other than stupidity the potential for evil.
The bottom line is, financialization of securities and housing, uncontrolled immigration and cloaked corruption of work and education visas has gutted our employment market and driven down wages to the benefit of this same S&P500 group of companies. Therefore, instead of being able to land an entry-level job as an engineer or manager in a large company, we are left to reorganize shelves at the supermarket or carry boxes for UPS if we are lucky enough to find a job at all.
I think the OP speaks volumes to folks considering a 2nd house as an investment.
As far as a 1st house goes, you either suck it up or rent.
As you say, if wages can't keep up with inflated housing affordability, you may not have that choice.
If I were not already several years into a mortgage, I would live in an RV.
A house is an expense. Either you can afford it or you can't. Owning a home changed from being a standard of living to being a luxury.
This is caused by our money system being abused by politics, and a completely failed experiment in "free trade" which turned out to only benefit the most wealthy. Fiat and globalism destroyed jobs and the middle class. Globalism, advocated by corporations, under "free-trade" (we had no tariffs, while everyone else had tariffs against us) simultaneously created behemoths in China and India - natural adversaries who we treated as allies but our loyalty was never and never will be reciprocal.
All the while education and technical worker visas, created at the same time a vacuuming up of a native-born scientific and engineering jobs and its associated nativist influence, was advocated by Wallstreet, large corporations and politicians on both sides being pre-owned by these treacherous business interests, conspired to sell our country out from under our generation.
I dont disagree. Add to this that zero/low interest rates create speculation/bubbles in assets never intended to be investments (trades)... ala houses.
Bitcoin fixes this
Maintenance and by the time you go to sell. it will need updating
Yeah. You have to have money for maintenance (or go further into debt to cover it).
In a falling market, these costs add to interest/taxes/insurance.
Likely still cheaper than renting, but you gotta come outta pocket and hope to get it back on resale.
Must consider the labor hours for repair, and that if there is ever need to rely on a tradesman, must be willing and able to find one, shop around, take the time to schedule / coordinate appointments, and stop them from padding the bill - which requires being with them literally al the time they are working, or else just the cost to pay whatever they say they did.
you think that’s air you’re breathing?