I wonder if this is still true once population growth reaches zero or negative. It seems like the baked in assumption of housing is that someone else is going to need it more tomorrow than you do today. I think this is an experiment the U.S. will begin running in earnest in the near future.
That if won't happen anytime soon neither for the Earth in general nor USA in particular. Media often loves to move goals from population growth to agin g population to fertility rate, etc. All those while connected do not negate the fact that population is growing, and growing fast. That 'once population growth reaches zero or negative' is very theoretical and UN is constantly underestimating population growth. So no, we will not see that in our lifetimes.
I think you are missing 'in our lifetime', even though you are quoting 'will double in ~150 years'. Also 'declining every year' doesn't mean it won't start growing again.
Most developed countries will probably run the experiment before us, as long as we can keep the country appealing enough to keep attracting immigrants.
Buy housing in hyper desirable areas that rarely become more dense. Everyone always loves the beach, whether there are 1% fewer humans next year or not.
Yes, but only because you can overcharge rents to people who can't afford housing. If everyone could afford housing, it wouldn't have any return.
The return on housing rents is equal to the minimum (psychological) expectation that landlords expect. It's an arbitrary vig/rake, and like all arbitrary vigs/rakes, it's around 5%. It's an expected gift for owning the house. It's a gratuity for being wealthy enough that you're never forced to buy or sell.
An aside is that this rate was set in one context by currency and convention: an English pound was 20 shillings, and a guinea was 21. So when you won an auction, you would pay the auction house in guineas, and the auction house would pay the owner of the item in pounds, giving a 4.75% share to the house. Racehorses are still sold this way, although aren't any guineas or shillings any more, it's now 1£ and 1.05£.
Owning capital has a cost - the cost of capital (aka, the cost of money). At minimum, the cost is the risk free interest rate.
The owner paid a pretty penny (or borrowed, at a higher than risk-free rate) to buy the property. The previous seller did the same, or invested capital in building the property itself. So therefore, "owning a house" is the last chain in a sequence of investments, all of which costs money.
Yeah, it would be interesting to have more transparent costs, especially with inflation. New siding every 20 years is $40k, a new roof might be $30k every 25 years, a new driveway, etc.
I just shudder to think about all my trips to Home Depot over the last 20 years of owning a home.
I never did those when I was renting. Yes, I didn't get to renovate or pick my paint colours. And yes my money paid down someone else's mortgage. But I suspect if you add it all up...
which is a bit of a non-sequitur - who cares what your rent is paying towards? The landlord could be smoking weed with your rent money and you'd not be affected (financially).
You should add it all up. Some of the things you purchased at Home Depot can be counted in the cost basis of the home and reduce your capital gains tax if you later sell it.
Really? Really? So if you bought a shack in Vancouver twenty years ago for a song and now it's worth the entire symphony orchestra you can sell it with no taxes?
No wonder prices up there have gone bonkers even by US standards.
Biggest of them all: interest. On a $1M mortgage, you’ll almost pay $2M as interest over 30 years even at 7%.
Historically interest was never as low as during the pandemic. And most people bought houses using mortgages. The average “cost” of owning a house is much more than the selling price, even before you account for the upkeep.
The mortgage interest is one of the few costs that people (sometimes) account for. Usually with a hand-waving "my mortgage payment is lower or about the same as my rent payment" - which ignores that a rent payment covers everything whereas the mortgage payment only covers principal, interest (and sometimes insurance and property tax, if escrowed).
In many places, this can be substracted from taxes, effectively slashing 35-40% of the cost where I live. So does almost all renovation costs (not upgrades though, just repairs).
Also, where I live 7% wasn't the case in past 20 years, and even now its rather 1.5% + whatever bank puts on.
> all the tax affordances related to owning real estate vs. equities
The only ones I can think of are depreciation (analogous to capital loss harvesting), 1031 exchanges (loosely analogous to step-up basis; this is the biggest difference) and opportunity zones (analogous to QSBS).
If you borrow against your equities, you can deduct the interest paid on that. That mortgage-interest deductions are bigger is a function of the lending being federally guaranteed more than tax law.