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A comment on The Rise of the Rich Renter. Parent comment

Re:The Rise of the Rich Renter by nostrademons on Saturday October 07, 2017 @05:33PM (#15425824)
You can't count on that appreciation going up forever, though. Once the number of buyers or wealth of buyers declines, home prices will too. I look at a lot of the houses here and see Detroit in 50 years.

I moved here in 2009 and there was a big drop in house prices then, enough that everyone who bought in the boom years of 2004-2007 went underwater and many were foreclosed upon. Yes, I'm kicking myself for not buying then - though honestly, the money was in Google stock options instead and Google stock has gone up a lot more than Silicon Valley housing prices, so I probably still ended up ahead.

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Re:The Rise of the Rich Renter by rentcontrol on Saturday October 07, 2017 @05:46PM (#15425873)
Unless all of your money was in Google stock options, in the example mentioned earlier, one could buy a house and have Google stock options, so...
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Re:The Rise of the Rich Renter by nostrademons on Saturday October 07, 2017 @05:57PM (#15425910)
And then you are doubly exposed to Google's fortunes as a company (or in my case, quadruply-exposed: my salary and most of my professional network at the time were dependent on Google). The price of Mountain View real estate is pretty heavily correlated with Google's stock price.

It's not irrational to want to have some diversification, particularly when things work out fairly well anyway.

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