| > I fail to see how that factors in to buying a property. You have friends who benefited from an inheritance. I mean, somebody had to decide to buy the house at some point in time. I would have told them to do it. > Owning a house in the Midwest is like having an $xyz offer to move to <area with even lower house prices>. Yes, that is correct. The argument generalizes. > I don’t believe most people are willing to uproot their lives simply because they can get cheaper housing elsewhere. If I offer you a million dollars to move, then you're free to turn that down. What you are not free to do is pretend that it's not a real offer that you have that other people don't have. It exists. It's real. And if you own a home in California, then you have that offer. And other people do not. What you choose to do with that offer is up to you. > What equity? You advocated for putting as little as 5% down. You’re already going to have a higher than average interest rate and with such a small deposit it’ll be easy to tip into negative equity. The house I bought in 2020 is worth $xxx more today than what I paid for it. Had that not happened, then I'd just live here, either way, and I'd be in no worse position than had I stayed in the apartment I left to move here. (As you yourself argued, I need a roof over my head, anyway.) Since it did happen, I get to keep every bit of the upside, tax free. |
You bought at just the right time. Would buying the same property at 95% LTV be a great decision today?
With potential for a major loss, where’s the asymmetric upside the OP asked about?
I bought 6 years ago and prices remained flat for the first 4 years. It wasn’t until the pandemic fuelled boom that I saw any meaningful growth.
Had I chosen to sell before 2020 it would have been a negative “investment” once costs had been factored in.