• andrefsp@lemmy.world
    594·
    11 months ago

    Oh, I have something to say about this.

    About 7 or 8 years ago I bought my house. I had friends of mine showing me articles that basically had the same “renting is better than buying” message bullshit.

    You don’t really need much brain power to understand that is absurd. Paying loads amounts of money for something that will never be yours is obviously stupid in the long term.

    The thing that made me very upset at the time is that my friends drunk the cool aid of these very same article and didn’t buy a property when they had the chance… Now, 8 years after, they are all struggling to buy properties except now is a lot more expensive.

    The house you live in should be YOURS and no-one else.

    • CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
      17·
      11 months ago

      Bought around 7 years ago as well, got told the same things. I said I was taking a bit of a cost hit now to lower my costs in the long term because my mortgage payments will never go up the way my rent payments were.

      Fuck me I had no idea things would get this bad, and boy am I glad I got into a home when I did. It really shouldn’t cost that much to rent, this shit is absurd.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        81·
        11 months ago

        I agree that it’s better to own for 95% of the cases, but some of these people talking about renting being best might have been through the '08 crash. With China having their own financial crisis, we could be in a bubble because they invested a lot in US real estate. If your underwater in your mortgage (your mortgage is higher than it’s worth), you do feel like you’re drowning.

        I’m not trying to scare anyone, but there is no guarantee that anything stays the same. I also hope people who are buying for the first time understand the different types of loans and they should 99% of the time want a fixed rate.

    • Sagifurius@lemm.ee
      152·
      11 months ago

      In a very specific scenario, with a very large amount of running the numbers, as a high income person with low personal expenses and a very good investment advisor, I could see how in certain situations/locations where mortgage rates are much higher than rental rates, that you get better fiscal results investing than paying that mortgage. That was a very rare situation 7 years ago, even more rare now. Where I lived ten years ago, I could not possibly afford the mortgage but I could the rent. These days there the situation has reversed and they’re both sky high regardless.

        • Patches@sh.itjust.works
          6·
          11 months ago

          You are always paying property taxes forever. You are also always paying the owners insurance policy. How are either cons?

          The landlord is not going to pay either out of the kindness of their heart. It’s in your rent. And then you have to buy additional renters insurance - if you want that.

          So it comes down to moving being expensive if you want to, or have to. And it makes more sense to store the million your pops gave you in the stock market.

    • SCB@lemmy.world
      94·
      11 months ago

      In any ideal scenario, renting would be preferable to buying for the vast majority of people.

      The reason buying crushes renting, in terms of value, is that the value of housing (and thus the price) continually rises. Homeowners get equity and renters get fucked.

      This happens because we literally are not allowed to build enough housing. This makes owning a home an investment.

      I’ll give you three guesses as to what bloc of voters instituted those restrictions, and continues to fight for them today.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        61·
        11 months ago

        We are in the actual thread that tells you why there’s a problem, it’s corporations and investment funds buying up all of the available supply. We might be tight on supply if we got rid of all of them doing that, but it wouldn’t be a crisis.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
          53·
          11 months ago

          Buying up supply happens because of what I described above.

          If housing isn’t the most reliable investment you can possibly make, then there is less incentive to buy up all the housing.

          This program is fine. Whatever. Every little bit helps and I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. But it’s a band-aid on a bullet wound

          We might be tight on supply if we got rid of all of them doing that, but it wouldn’t be a crisis.

          This, however, is flat wrong, because the crisis preceded the investment

          • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
            6·
            11 months ago

            I think you might be having a math problem.

            Corporation Plan

            • Step 1, US has a financial meltdown
            • Step 2, corporations buy up all of the housing at cheap prices, price fix the rentals and use a shit ton of them for airBNBs
            • Step 3, not worry about the empty units or homes because price fixing and airBNBs will fix that
            • Step 4, develop a crowdfunding site so “investors” can get in on the renting/price fixing game
            • Step 5, complain that there isn’t enough housing to get the zoning changed, so they can build “luxury” apartments where they continue to price fix or rent out to tourists/business people because they’re ToTALLy NoT A hoTEl!
            • Step 6, profit, profit, profit

            Common Person Plan

            • Step 1, look to buy a home but there’s not enough supply so the prices go up
            • Step 2, try to save but their rent keeps getting raised because it’s being price fixed and there is a lack of supply (sometimes real because of the tourists)
            • Step 3, continue to rent while nervously waiting to try and build up a deposit and there’s less and less supply
            • Step 4, rent, rent, rent further away from the city core
            • SCB@lemmy.world
              15·
              11 months ago

              I really don’t because the economics here doesn’t change. You’re just trying to moral high-ground economic concepts, which isn’t useful for policy solutions.

              It’s good for rhetoric tho, and we need to change minds, so it’s not a total waste.

              • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
                41·
                11 months ago

                You’re just trying to moral high-ground economic concepts, which isn’t useful for policy solutions.

                What moral high ground? It’s easy to fix, make it so corporations can’t own more than a certain amount of units and corporations in general as a percentage of units in a city. If anyone has more than 4 airBNB units, you have to become a hotel. Simple solutions that won’t catch every instance but will make a dent.

                • SCB@lemmy.world
                  16·
                  11 months ago

                  “corporations bad” is a moral stance. It’s irrelevant to the underlying economics

                  We aren’t debating policy. we agree on policy.

      • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
        21·
        11 months ago

        I suppose my ideals are different: in an ideal scenario, I think buying is preferable to renting. But besides the problem of having enough money to get started with buying, renting gives a flexibility and reduced (outsourced to landlord) responsibility that’s very valuable for many people, especially in the short term.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
          1·
          11 months ago

          By “ideal scenario” I mean a situation in which home prices do not reliably go up every single year forever

    • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
      24·
      11 months ago

      You don’t really need much brain power

      Yes, yes. You’re very smart and special…

      You’re not exactly wrong, but we should all be focused on the extremely wealthy and giant property companies that caused and are profiting off the housing crisis, yet people like you would rather jack yourselves off at your amazing foresight and laugh at anyone struggling. Kind of a Boomer response, no? Try to learn some empathy…

    • Illuminostro@lemmy.world
      28·
      11 months ago

      Well, the thing is you never really own it. Don’t pay your property taxes and insurance, see what happens.

      Buying makes sense if you’re going to leave that property to children or relatives.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
        21·
        11 months ago

        Well, the thing is you never really own it. Don’t pay your property taxes and insurance, see what happens.

        What is the point of this comment? As long as you live in society you will be paying taxes. Death and taxes are the two global absolutes, and an argument could be made that death may be ultimately beatable.

        • Illuminostro@lemmy.world
          11·
          11 months ago

          I’m not anti-tax. I’m just stating the fact that in the United States, and many other countries, you never actually “own” your residence.