Until you have a 2007 collapse again (predicted by some to happen again soon), where you both lose your job and a massive amount in stocks. Savings have been at extremely low rates for a long period of time in the US.
One extreme downside of thinking of your home as an investment vehicle is how poorly it is diversified. It is almost exactly directly correlated to the local job market...and to macro trends like the MBS issues we saw in 2008.
This is what I cannot understand about people who advocate buying homes in the United States for small-time investors - how can you not see this? How does it make any sense to divert almost all of your cash flow into a single, massively leveraged, illiquid investment? Miss a few payments on your mortgage and you are totally wiped out (and without a place to live!). At least stocks can bounce back and maybe you can get 30% back on bad bonds. And no one is stopping you from holding cash or TIPS.
If you are wealthy and a house is a small part of your portfolio the impact of the possible downsides is qualitatively different, but as a small-time investor tying up most of my wealth into home ownership on the hope that "house prices always go up" (which really means treating the future generation as suckers that will pay inflated prices for your home) and that the risk of mortgage default does not exist does not make sense to me.
Stocks and bonds aren't any better anymore--the bottom could drop out again anytime and leave you with half or less of what you previously had.
We're in a crap storm of epic proportions in this country, but we avoid the reality of it.
That was my experience in Ann Arbor as well.
$1200 is really the minimum for a 2 bedroom apartment here. There are a few that are maybe $100 - $200 lower, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Landlords and letting agencies can be kind-of funny beasts, they're not necessarily happy to have an unemployed guy as a tenant even if he owns a pile of shares.
That's a ridiculous analogy. Renting vs. buying skis is like renting a hotel room vs. buying a condo when you spend a weekend in a different city. There's a good reason hotels are profitable businesses: no one wants to buy a home if they're going to spend 2 weeks or less in a location.
A better analogy is cars: what kind of moron would rent a car for commuting to work every day? No one, because it'd be a massive waste of money. Rental cars are for people who only need a car occasionally, or who are traveling by air and can't bring their own car with them. Otherwise, it's much cheaper to just own your own car, so you aren't paying tons of money to some company in the form of profit.
>Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income.
The 2008 crash disproves this, as does every stock market crash throughout history. Right at the moment you need that money the most, because the crash caused you to lose your job, your stock portfolio has tanked. This isn't the case with houses: if you own your house outright, you're safe (as long as you keep paying property tax, which is minimal in many places), and even with a mortgage, the terms of the mortgage are constant so you can budget for the payment and keep that much liquid cash on hand. Rent, OTOH, can change whenever your lease expires, or even at any time if you're on a month-to-month lease.
>The cost of housing (renting) would be much lower in a country without massive over-bidding on property.
And which country is that? Somalia? Every time I've looked at rents in Europe, they're much higher than here in the US, along with cost of living in general, even after our price inflation in the wake of the 2008 crash.
The simple fact is that, when you rent, part of your rental price goes to pay for profit for whoever owns the property. If there were no (or little) profit in it, no one would bother being a property owner. When you own something, you take the middleman out of the equation.
Do you also think it's a good idea to rent things like computers, printers, phones, furniture, appliances, clothes, cars, etc.?
Also, given the amount of labor force mobility in US now vs 30 years ago it anyways does not makes sense to force people to 'settle down'.
It is difficult to ski without skis. But most people don't buy skis, they rent them. Renting skis do not mean that no skis will be manufactured. There is a need for house, houses will be constructed, irrespective of whether people will over-bid on them or not.
> A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness
Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income.
> Real estate can be borrowed against
Borrowing against your home to finance your business is no different than selling some stocks to invest into your business. In both cases you are using previous savings.
> I think there's a lot of sense in NOT taxing one's first home
Why? Again you are assuming that the alternative to owning a home is renting one and having no savings. The cost of housing (renting) would be much lower in a country without massive over-bidding on property. There is no reason to give a tax benefit to this particular type of investment (property) over any other types of investment.