2024 ELECTION THREAD

The same is true of Apple stock, physical gold, and the $100 bills in your drawer.

Better comparison would be an old piece of furniture, with antiquarian value, you intend to keep though, and you using currently.

Need to compare with something you are using and didn't buy just with the intention of storing value for future consumption, rather with the intention primarily of extracting value by the mere possession of it, with the resellable value only applying far later in time.

If the value of your used car fluctuates that's immaterial to you , is it? ofc what matters is how much if anything it values when you will sell it.

You spend 10k for a top of the line PC setup to play games or work or whatever.

3 months later prices drop dramatically and you could have bought it for 7.5K.

You get sad for a bit because of the "missed savings" but when you bought it was rational for you for your consumption (or work) needs and that's it, why should you care about the fact that the price suddenly dropped more than you expected? other that for irrational , emotional reasons which you should work to eliminate from your mind everytime you think about money?

Cite where renters likely pay less than homeowners due to taxes insurance and repairs.

Nbd if you made it up , just admit it if so

Not to mention rent goes up a ton year after year. Your mortgage stays the same, HOA and taxes may vary a little.

Most houses don’t need lots of repairs lol

Anyway, please cite

Yeah except your rent will go up , your mortgage won’t tho

There’s a big part of having a mortgage that people forget about; rent

Vegas prices

2015 a condo was $60k here and rent was $725 a month. Mortgage plus hoa was like $800

2022 same condo was $180k and rent was $1800 a month. Mortgage and hoa is $1450

Let’s say in 2027 same condo will be worth $220k. Rent will be about $2200 a month.

I don't live in any of those. Plus, should I need some money, I can sell a portion of my stock or gold. It's also a bit easier to sell either than it is to sell a house. $100 bills? Well, I can certainly take one down to the local QwickyMart, buy some gumballs and get $95 change. With a house, not so much.

All of the right-of-center whites love that ****, and there are many millions of them in the US. Combine that, with the baked-in electoral college advantage for Trump (close to going 2 for 2 despite badly losing the popular vote both times), and I think it's important not to bury the guy.

Figuratively, that is. It'd be pretty cool if someone literally buried him. If only that one dork had actually domed Trump on live TV...

Taking the long-term view, I think the Trump phenomenon will be good for Democrats; it's gonna be reallllly hard for the typical Republican to get excited by any of these milquetoast Rubios or Romneys again after a decade of Trump tapping directly into their brain's emotion centers. And we've seen what happens when the DeSantises of the world try to mimic Trump -- they're unable to successfully steal this guy's flow.

Do you pay for the housing you live in out of your own wallet?

But to your point, it doesn't really matter if your the purchasing power of the $100 bill in your drawer goes down if you have no intention of doing anything other than leaving it in your drawer.

I understand that homes are an asset you can live in. I understand that you can't live in a gold bar or a share of Apple stock. I'm not an idiot.

But the reality is that a lot of people rely on the equity in their homes as a safety net. It's something that they can borrow against, or turn into cash through a sale if something goes wrong in their lives. If necessary, it's something they can turn into cash to manage expenses over the last ten years of their lives.

In a perfect world, home owners would have enough savings outside the equity in their homes that they wouldn't have to view their homes in this way.

But that isn't reality for a lot people, at least in the U.S.

I don't understand. I certainly didn't pay for my apartment out of someone else's wallet.

PW i think the rent v buy comparison requires elements you aren't touching.

A big one is "probability i will want to live in that place in a few years time", if that's not really high, the attrition costs of buying and reselling (realtors mainly, scamming you huge sums, by can be transaction taxes in some countries as well), can push in favor of renting a lot.

And if you don't necessarily intend to live there for very long, you miss out on some of the big advantages of owneship: specific furniture made exactly for your walls/preferences, and renovation to make rooms optimals for your needs.

And before you go "few people move", well not really no, and many don't because they are... stuck with housing but would otherwise, so think of the opportunity cost of owning, in that sense.

Say you are 26 out of college single with a decent job, in a good (cheap) market so you could buy in a meh neighbourhood, a small place. What if you want to make a family? live crammed in the sad neighbourhood with your SO, and 0 chance to have your kids there (because schools suck, but you didn't care when you bought as a young single)?

This is just 1 of 1219023 possible examples,e ven without changing city.

Then there are the big ones that affect everyone like 1) possible future windfalls arriving (inheritance) 2) mortgage rates v rent to yield ratios in your area 3) how much you have unusual needs that the renting market can't satisfy completly 4) etcetera etcetera

I owned, i rented, i even rented while i owned in some moments in life. It's complicated

???

It can be. It's a math problem.

I know that you appreciate the point. I'm just noting that "need to sell or need to borrow against the equity" isn't some sort of edge case life condition that we can exclude from consideration when deciding whether there is real world impact to declines in housing prices.

I think it's the difference between knowing the option is there if you need it, and actually exercising it.

Correct. It really depends on where you live, what your financial situation is, and the state of the mortgage market.

It's not only math for many reasons.

One being for example that getting a mortgage forces you to save (the equity portion of each payment is savings).

The more you aren't otherwise capable to save regardlessly, the more getting a mortgage makes for you specifically sense and viceversa, ceteris paribus.

For you, perhaps. But the options you describe would not be real options for a great many people, including me. If I suddenly lost my home and all my liquid assets, it would not be practical for me to move my family to my mother's house. Off the top of my head, I don't know any friends that could accommodate my family for any significant length of time. I certainly don't get housing through my job. I would have to take my paycheck and pay rent in order to keep a roof over my family's head.

I never said anything about renting being a better or worse option for most people. I don't know how you got that from my posts.

Didace obviously wasn't talking about the psychology of saving.

No but i am, given we discuss rent v buying, and that's one aspect of it (if you want to help someone you know make a decision). Simply responding to the "it's math".

It's a math problem with many variables, some of which are unknowable best guesses. One's ability to save in various manners is one of those.

Probably my mistake. But I think is not so far fetched me coming to the conclusion that you were trying to connect a "very well know organization" to it having credibility.

Like I said before, I don't let a research engine decide what I think.
And you didn't gave me the name of that well know organization, so where should I look for the information?

Do you know that hope as quite of meanings? Once more, trying to take things out of context?

"We're talking about a conspiracy theorists' blog. Enjoy it if that's your thing."

He does exactly what other investigative journalists do: He shares information and connects the dots the way it makes more sense for him. The only difference being, that while he shares his sources and he comes to pro-human solutions for the problems we might face, most of others, in particular very well know organizations do neither. The term "conspiracy theory" is used often these days to differ without conversation the information that other people shares.

You seem to be trying to send sand to people's eyes or you simply don't want to look at information with an open mind. So I leave you to it, whatever is your preference.

Ok my apologies