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by djent 1200 days ago
Suggesting that the conclusion is telling homeowners that their asset is now "worthless" is extreme hyperbole. Homeowners live in their house. You need only apply the same metaphor from the article. Nobody might be willing to pay money for my couch, but I still keep it in my living room and use it.
1 comments
mulmen 1200 days ago
Yep. Even if I bought a house at the peak and the market tanks I can still sell it (at a loss) and buy a comparable house because those are cheaper too. The people who get screwed are the multiple-home-owning rent seekers and I'm ok with that.

Treating your primary residence as an investment has been bad financial philosophy for all of time.

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panopticon 1200 days ago
> The people who get screwed are the multiple-home-owning rent seekers and I'm ok with that.

And people who suddenly find themselves underwater on their mortgage. Assuming they face no economic shocks they might be able to ride it out, but that sounds like a very stressful situation to be in.

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mulmen 1199 days ago
Going in to a mortgage without a plan for the market tanking and being upside down means you shouldn't have gone into the mortgage. They can stay in the house and continue making the payments they can afford. They can afford the payments, right? Right??

If they can't then they fall back on some social safety net that prevents bad decisions from being ruinous. Our lack of these mechanisms is why we have to keep propping housing up. The problem is we can't keep doing that.

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humanrebar 1200 days ago
> The people who get screwed are the multiple-home-owning rent seekers and I'm ok with that.

Well, also people who were planning on retiring to a lower cost of living area (i.e., NY to Florida) and using the difference difference in housing costs as part of their retirement income.

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mulmen 1199 days ago
I don't think it is a good long term plan to subsidize poor retirement savings strategies at the cost of affordable housing. This is why we need to provide safety nets, in case people paint themselves into these corners. But we don't need to bend over backwards to make those bad ideas passable ideas, the cost to society is too great.
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