"the public" tend to not have much cash on hand, especially in times of crisis. Those that would have benefitted from a massive real estate firesale would have been savvy 0.1 percenters.

>> Those that would have benefitted from a massive real estate firesale would have been savvy 0.1 percenters.

And many of those buildings would flood the rental market, driving down consumer pricing and enabling affordable rents.

...or just sit idle in a portfolio until the market bounced back, which is what happens in large real estate investments.

That’s not true at all. I worked at one of the big pe firms that made lots of money from 2008. Their goal was to move things to profitability asap. Either get a loan to performing (via getting holder to repay or rent), sell the note, or foreclose and sell the property (sometimes to a sister company). Same goes for anyone holding a property. Empty properties are targets for squatting and quickly fall into disrepair. The last thing a savvy investor wants is a nonperforming property.

I think parent's comment was about large real estate investments. Which can often sit idly for years before being sold/reinvested for a profit.

...and a massive plunge in real estate values would probably cause a lot of existing property owners to be upside-down on their holdings, forcing many to sell and/or default on their mortgage/debt repayments, which is sort of how this got started in the first place

On the monetary side it's hard to say which would have been better. There were people in debt, so keeping deflation at bay was important. Then again, even if 0.1 percenters bought these, overall cost of living and consumables would be cheaper, and debt is generally dischargeable, so you could argue keeping deflation at bay wasn't really to protect the debtors but the debt holders.

All said, well considered fiscal stimulus years ago would have been most directly beneficial to "the public" among all measures.

> debt is generally dischargeable

How stressful is the process of discharging debt and what is the difference in suicide rate between baseline and those going through this process?

Compared to?

If a good chunk of the population is doing it it becomes less stressful. It's not like the alternate route (the one we took) has been stress free either.

Do you mean for individuals or for countries?

Speak for yourself. My 10%er friends did buy up property, I only imagine them being able to buy more.