[diogenes4]

> Or are the people who are predisposed to living a stressful life with fast ageing more likely to choose privately rented homes, and taking away that option wouldn't actually help them?

Why would people living stressful lives choose to rent? That makes no sense—generally speaking, people don't like renting and generally speaking it's more affordable to pay off a mortgage than it is to pay off someone else's.

[throwaway290]

> generally speaking, people don't like renting and generally speaking it's more affordable to pay off a mortgage than it is to pay off someone else's

Do you like buying houses with money you don't have?

[epiccoleman]

I like it a whole hell of a lot better than paying off the mortgage some landlord took so that they could buy a house with money they didn't have. Not to mention of course that they get to soak up all the equity while also making a profit from my rent.

[throwaway290]

Many people are not OK taking any debt, much less massive debt with implication of losing home if not repaid. For me it would be living in perpetual anxiety.

If you rent you're in control. lost job, downsize with little hassle. noisy partygoers or Airbnb managers move in next door, just move

[epiccoleman]

> If you rent you're in control. lost job, downsize with little hassle. noisy partygoers or Airbnb managers move in next door, just move

I call bullshit on both counts. When I was renting I had two separate incidents where neighbors came into the adjacent unit and caused issues. In both cases the landlord finally had to evict them.

"Downsize with little hassle" amounts to the same as "just move" which is by no means a small or easy thing to do. People have kids in school, you can't "just move" but instead have to find another apartment, that you can afford, where you can pay whatever bogus up-front fees the landlord wants. Your landlord could decide at any time to sell your building/unit/house to another landlord. Your rent goes up with no ability to control it.

Owning a home puts me in much greater control of how my life looks than renting ever did. It requires a little more effort and care for renting and there's certainly some risk, but there's a lot of upside too.

[throwaway290]

I don't get it. Next door you usually have a place owned by another person. Your landlord evicted another landlord? If one landlord owns entire building, that's super atypical.

[samtho]

The problem is rarely cash flow, it's credit worthiness and access to a one-time down payment. Additionally, the types of mortgages people take out are fixed rate and your payment never changes (so long as you do not refinance) regardless of inflation, as such, you are paying less over time for your housing, especially compared to renting where rents tend to out pace inflation. Additionally, the money you put in for rent is just flowing down the drain as you receive no long term equity or value benefit once it leaves your bank account. As the saying goes, it's expensive to be poor.

[diogenes4]

Isn't buying a house with money you don't have just describing the institution of mortgages?

And yes, I would love to own a house. I just can't get the mortgage without meeting irrelevant and onerous criteria.

[lm28469]

> Why would people living stressful lives choose to rent?

They live stressful lives because they're running after money

> it's more affordable to pay off a mortgage

Most people can;t afford mortgage. In most places they'll rent you a $500/month place but won't let you take a mortgage for $500/month. Not even taking into account current interest rates

[diogenes4]

> Most people can;t afford mortgage. In most places they'll rent you a $500/month place but won't let you take a mortgage for $500/month

Nit, but they can afford the mortgage fine, the problem is they're denied it.

[lm28469]

yes that's what I meant, thanks

[quantified]

They don't choose to rent. They're forced to.

A relative few people think it's financially better to rent than to own so they can deploy their capital elsewhere. These folks have a lot more capital to play with in the first place, and would likely be part of the group that rents but lives longer.