Because housing ownership is backwards to most assets in the US. If the value of your home goes down while you’re paying a mortgage, you’re losing massively. If it goes up, you can leverage your mortgage debt.
It’s specifically designed as a debt trap that aligns the working class with capital interests while not giving any real power to mortgage/home owners.
Yeah, but it means if you decide to sell you can get out of your mortgage. If prices go down, selling means you are stuck with whatever the drop was when/if you sell.
The 30 year mortgage was such an amazing, simple, effective system of social control but they let that whole system decay so they could make some short term gains
That’s still wealth, though. Just because you need to go through the inconvenience of moving to make it a liquid asset doesn’t mean it’s not worth a lot, and it’s in the owner’s material interest that it goes up in value.
It’s not like you have to buy another house when you sell it; you could move to a rental, or move in with a SO/family.
House prices going down is a GOOD THING for almost everyone except those who have more housing than they need.
Things we need should be cheaper. Why is this even a slightly controversial maxim?
Because housing ownership is backwards to most assets in the US. If the value of your home goes down while you’re paying a mortgage, you’re losing massively. If it goes up, you can leverage your mortgage debt.
It’s specifically designed as a debt trap that aligns the working class with capital interests while not giving any real power to mortgage/home owners.
Even having a mortgage doesn’t make it in your interest for house prices to go up. Not unless you’re about to CASH IN by going homeless.
Yeah, but it means if you decide to sell you can get out of your mortgage. If prices go down, selling means you are stuck with whatever the drop was when/if you sell.
Yeah… you can sell and get out of your mortgage. Where are you then… y’know, going to live?
Remember it’s all hypothetical. Plus reverse mortgages, people will take those out later and they only make sense if your home value has increased.
The 30 year mortgage was such an amazing, simple, effective system of social control but they let that whole system decay so they could make some short term gains
People who live in a cutthroat society where precarity is just one unlucky event away will hold on to what wealth they have for dear life.
Yeah but it’s not wealth unless you intend to sell your own house, and then you’ll need to like… live somewhere still.
That’s still wealth, though. Just because you need to go through the inconvenience of moving to make it a liquid asset doesn’t mean it’s not worth a lot, and it’s in the owner’s material interest that it goes up in value.
It’s not like you have to buy another house when you sell it; you could move to a rental, or move in with a SO/family.
Right. It’s only wealth if you have extra housing to use or intend to choose to rent for some reason, a generally very poor decision financially.