[jjoergensen]

Buying a house means taking over a payment and tax liability, it's not just about owning and controlling an asset. Confidence in the financial system is apparently so low that someone is willing to pay you fictitious money now in return of fewer actual cash in the future.

[spaceflunky]

What am I missing here? why are they doing this? There has to be some other gain somewhere else.

[Traster]

It's fixed for 10 years. So yes, it's underperforming right now, but the fact that the yield curve has inverted gives them good reason to believe that there's going to be a recession in the next 10 years, so actually this is a relatively good return compared to losing money in the stock market or losing even more by buying the 10 year govenrment bond which right now is paying -0.58%.

[spaceflunky]

why can't they just sit on the money? Wouldn't that perform better?

[novaRom]

The gain is they will loose less than borrowers.