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by ivanbakel 1498 days ago
A lot of the downsides you listed apply to house-buyers, not homeowners. If you already have a property, deposit size doesn't matter to you. Price increases are only a positive - it's the bank that's losing out.

While you may pay more in property tax, I'm sure the savings on your mortgage interest more than offset any tax increases.

2 comments

I would expect that more likely than not, the same dynamics allowing the interest rate to be low also cause the purchasing power of the currency to decrease. A homeowner not able to increase their income to offset this decrease in purchasing power may be experiencing a net loss of purchasing power even if their mortgage interest costs decrease.
In a developed service-based economy, relative purchasing power isn't that important in the short term. You might eventually notice the indirect impact of imports being more expensive, but I doubt that matters too much to the average person.

You also have to account for the fact that house prices are rising - so even if you're losing purchasing power, you're still making nominal gains on your assets.

What is relative purchasing power?

In an economy where supply of labor is decreasing quicker than automation can replace it due to decreasing proportion of younger working people to older non working people, I would say being able to procure labor is a bigger problem than imports. And that will get harder if your cash flow buys less and less.

Bingo! Inflation!!

That too must be factored in. Cheap printed money === inflation

But...it's house-buyer driving up all prices (in a neighborhood). Give it a couple of months. See how many homeowners are bragging about the loss in value of their homes. Let's see how that plays out in Nov.