[saiya-jin]

This doesn't cover many many people for various reasons. Ie I own 2 properties and I live in neither (house that I bought for my parents 1500km away, investment apartment in the mountains). I rent, because a) it doesn't make much sense to buy a property in traditional sense here where I live, too costly; b) we're not yet stabilized on location with first kid coming, and pinning us down to specific place before this is clear might be a huge mistake on many levels and massive stressor for our lives and relationship. We might end up not buying anything else till rest of our lives, dunno now.

Others might have other reasons for similar state.

[jcheng]

I think jdmichal’s point was that if you don’t own a property, you’ll lose money (in the form of increased rent) if the real estate market goes up. In effect, you are born with a short position on the market just by needing a place to live, and owning your primary residence gets you to neutral.

[jdmichal]

I mean, I guess I could refine it to say "primary residence" instead of "first property"? Otherwise, yea it's an analogy and it will break down at some point.

This is more meant to attack the idea of a primary residence being an "investment". If people insist on calling it an investment, then it's fair for me to insist that it's only covering a short position, because you need somewhere to live.