Comment
byu/maclargehuge from discussion
inwaterloo
The problem is you’re thinking of a house as a place where people live and build families.
This is wrong. A house is simply an investment vehicle to be flipped frequently in search of ever inflating gains, so that you can build enough equity to retire with some degree of dignity. If you’re lucky you die before exhausting all of that stored value.
You’re thinking of a community as a place where individuals and families grow together over time, and because they all have a long term stake in that place, they pull together to advocate for their best interests, like a healthy local ecosystem for example.
This is wrong. Communities are simply containers for investments, temporary stops on a never ending road to continuous gains. Social bonds are unnecessary since you will have shiny new neighbours within 4-6 years anyhow. And everyone has their own snowblower, so what’s the point in talking to people.
You’re thinking of commuting as way to get to work. This is wrong. Commuting is the key to making this charade work by slowly acclimatizing workers to longer and longer commutes because no one lives where they work anymore, and furthermore it’s ridiculous for anyone to expect to be able to. This applies only to people who have to be physically present in their workplace of course, which includes everyone in service, retail, construction, supply chain and transportation. Most of these jobs will disappear to some degree over time due to lots of factors, but as a result mostly of technology pushed by companies staffed largely by people working from home.
You’re thinking of climate change as a systemic problem exacerbated by, among other things vehicle emissions, gridlock, and the disconnect of people from their particular time and place (see: community). You may think that since workers have so little time (see: commuting) and are too terrified by the prospect of getting frozen out of the economy (see: house) to really challenge the nature of that economy, and climate change itself. You may also think that housing value should at least in some way be tied to whether the house itself does anything to address climate change, for example if a house inflates by 200k, did anyone at least beef up the insulation and install solar panels or a high efficiency furnace?
These notions are all wrong. As soon as everyone has an all electric, self-driving pod that they’re financing against their mortgage, so they can video chat with their kids over breakfast, all the above concerns will collapse. In addition, if you find yourself on the wrong end of the housing market at something point, you can live in the pod.
Rent out the trunk for a little bit extra every month.
Reading this comment is akin to reading Babylon Bee articles or sitting in an old barber shop with mirrors in front and behind the chair; is he serious, is he cynical, am I the rube, do I not get it, which image is real, constantly getting whipsawed … I just go back to plugging away on our retirement home repairs, hoping we can enjoy it and maybe have some time for a few days fishing in the creek.
Best of Luck
Joe
What an idiot!!!
I like what my parents did. They bought ONE HOUSE … this house … and have lived here since 1966. They made this house a HOME. I’m eternally grateful they didn’t drag my fat ass every few years to yet another place for “investment” purposes. I would have turned up even more fucked up than I am now.
Thanks, Mom and Dad!
Fuck you, Mr. Investmest Dude!
It appears you are using the term House as used in the article to mean Home. They do not mean the same thing. A home is where the heart lives with those you love as you stated and I whole heartedly agree. A home can be an apartment. A home can be a tent. A home can reside in a house but a home is not a house. A house is mere sticks, bricks, and mortar. A house is a thing. It can be a storehouse of value. It can be fixed up and flipped for a profit. To mistake a house for a home is to seek that which you don’t have in the marketplace. You’ll never find a home for sale in the marketplace only houses and apartments. And as to your attitude toward those who work with an eye toward their own future retirement, the well being and future of their kids, and their kid’s kid’s future, well, to each their own and unto them their own reward. Enjoy your meager retirement but don’t kick sand at those who see you failed to plan and thus planned to fail.
You obviously adhere to the Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad,Poor Dad) school of financial planning. Paraphrasing …
— “There is bad debt, there is good debt!”
— “Mortgage debt is GOOD!”
— “Good debt pays for itself!!”
— “Leverage your money! Be your own banker!!”
— “Equity is dead money!! Pull it out and MAKE money!!
Ask lamont cranston below how that worked out for him.
You are a Snake Oil salesman … not an “investment dude”.
====================
“The Truth? Your House Is Not An Investment: Buying a house is a major financial decision that can give you peace of mind and a wonderful place to live. But it’s not an investment.”
Here ….
https://www.moneyunder30.com/why-your-house-is-not-an-investment
My folks bought one house also, in 1965. Dad told me I’d always have a place to call home. He died in ’99, one month shy of their 50th anniversary. My mother spent beyond her means her entire life, and continued after he died. She reversed mortgaged it, encouraged by my ‘millionaire’ older brother-too stubborn to listen to me. I did all the repairs on it, new roof, new bathroom, new central heat unit, painting…on and on.
I could see the financial trouble coming….and I had two stents, and a quadruple bypass in a “widow maker” at the same time by brother was putting her into a rest home and holding an estate sale…. I discharged from the hospital on Friday the 13th of July 2018. The next morning my wife’s mother (who lived just south of town with her very recently retired son) was calling in a panic…..her son was dead in bed from a heart attack.
His two boys had their lawyer send their grandma a letter (which she got in the mail when we took her home from the funeral) giving her thirty days to vacate…
I stumbled across a small two bedroom straight across the alley from our place while I was doing my cardio rehab walking. We didn’t have enough to money to buy my mother’s place too…..so the promise I made to dad a month before he died (I’d see to it that we keep the place for his only grandkid to get) just went like a fart into the windstorm….
My dad would have no problem with me for what happened !
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum <—===
"I would have turned up even more fucked up than I am now."…..haha, I guess anything is possible.
My parents never moved during my childhood either. Besides giving me the stability of an unchanging homeplace, it also let them save a ton of stuff in their attic that I benefited from when I got married and moved to my own home. Thanks to their storage, I ended up with a house full of antique furniture (some of it going back to my great-great grandparents day), high quality vintage household items from deceased relatives, and heirloom toys that were as loved by my young daughter as they were by me. If they had moved, all of that stuff would likely have been donated or sold, and lost to the family because it would have cost too much and been too much of a hassle to move along with their own household possessions. Staying put in one place has many benefits 🙂
Arghh…I though I had changed the name on here but nope, I didn’t. This is OHMama, not Anon.
Sarcastic article, to say the least. Back in the early 00s, my financial advisor at that time told me to HELOC the hell out of my house and invest it. I did and regretted it. Wound up a zero sum game.
My idiot brother-in-law (the others are fine) HELOCed himself right into a rental at close to 60. He was convinced house prices grow to the sky and multi million McMansions magically pay for themselves. The Sheriff wound up auctioning his $1.6 million McMansion for $600k.
The first admonition of “this is wrong” triggered a red flag to just skim the commentary.
From there, 2 more reprimands of opinion for wrong think.
At that point, I bailed. The stench of superiority complex was a turnoff.
To each their own.
There’s more than 1 way to be successful in almost every endeavor.
I assume this is just sarcastic commentary on the view of our betters regarding houses as opposed to “homes” and how silly and insignificant our needs and desires are compared to theirs.