[jazzyjackson]

This kinda reminds me of student loans, why not get as many people as possible into 6 figure debt?

Yes mortgage is often cheaper than rental, but the whole tradeoff is the commitment, just like all kinds of services, if you pay 40 years up front you can get a good deal, but do you really want to take out a loan to do that?

Limiting landlords ability to buy property is reducing demand for construction, you want to increase demand for housing, not decrease it.

As I said in a sibling thread, it does suck that property owners are incentivized to raise their property values, preventing supply from reacting to demand.

[caditinpiscinam]

That "less commitment" argument assumes that renters are content to be paying higher-than-mortgage costs for a property they'll never own. If they are, then it's true that the rental system is benefiting them. If they'd rather own their homes and be paying a mortgage, then the rental system is a hindrance.

My intuition is that the majority of renters would rather be owners paying mortgages. This is less true of certain demographics (young people, students) and more true of others (older people, families).

I also wouldn't characterize being a renter as low-commitment. Say you're renting a place for 1.2k a month. When you sign a year lease, you're committing to pay 1.2k x 12 in rent, plus (at least) a month of security deposit, for a total of 15.6k. That may not be a down payment, but it's still a huge commitment, especially given how hard it is to assess potential problems with a living space before you've actually lived there.

[tpmoney]

> but it's still a huge commitment, especially given how hard it is to assess potential problems with a living space before you've actually lived there.

Now imagine trying to asses the potential problems with a living space before committing the next 30 years of those payments, plus locking yourself into that single living space and taking on the single and sole responsibility for repairing or addressing all of those problems yourself.

Look, I really like owning my own home, but when I signed a rental agreement, for the duration of the agreement that was the most money I would ever spend on my housing. And I never once worried about replacing a roof, or replacing an HVAC unit, or replacing a water main. I've owned my own home now for over a decade and my monthly housing expenditure is nearly 2x what it was when I started between tax increases, insurance increases and loans to pay for the various major repairs, and that's with a fixed rate primary mortgage. And that's my cost increases AFTER the insurance payouts. The townhome I first rented when I moved to the area currently rents for about $100 LESS than I pay each month. Granted when I bought the place, it was renting for about $200 more per month than I was paying but that basically means renting vs buying was a wash as far as costs go. Yes, to a degree I got unlucky, but that's also the point, I couldn't know if I was going to be unlucky or not before agreeing to the mortgage. As a renter I could get reviews and recommendations or warnings from prior tenants and at least have a chance of knowing what I was getting into.

[rascul]

> This kinda reminds me of student loans, why not get as many people as possible into 6 figure debt?

Didn't we already try that with housing?

[AstroBen]

I don't think this is a purely financial decision - my position on that is it's not a good investment if you're buying a single home. Taking on 5x leverage on a hugely concentrated asset is insane to me if it's a large % of your net worth

The bigger thing, though, is so many people are currently priced out from owning something for themselves. Your home is such a fundamental part of your life and for a lot of people renting fucking sucks. They can't live their lives the way they want to. To have that be the case because others are buying it up to profit? Ehh..