Another way I say it is that buying a house is a hedge against homelessness.

TBH I stole that from an article I read a while ago that I can't seem to Google now...

Except you need cash flow or savings to afford a house, even a paid off one. If you don't pay your mortgage or tax bill, then someone is going to evict you.

I don't understand the criticism, because the cash-flow aspect certainly doesn't get better with options beyond a wholly owned house...

Houses aren't great protection against homelessness because they don't address the root cause of being homeless: having no money or income. They can provide a buffer because it's harder to foreclose on a person than it is to evict them. While this additional time may certainly make a difference, in all likelihood the outcome of losing a job and not being able to find another one is probably the same.

You can't liquidate any built up equity either, since you probably need income or assets to get a rental or equity loan. So it's completely possible that you lose any built up equity in the event of a foreclosure too.

That's quite catchy. But nonetheless, people can "cover" by renting or buying. And in particular, to the degree that mortgage payments are greater than the equivalent rent, one is indeed investing in the real estate market. This is often good, but it can actually turn out much worse than (say) simply parking the money in an index fund.

This is more meant to attack the idea of a primary residence being an "investment". If people insist on calling it an investment, then it's fair for me to insist that it's only covering a short position, because you need somewhere to live.

I think, if anything, this position is actually supportive of making an educated rent vs buy comparison, by discarding any kind of "investment" potential on the buy side.

This doesn't cover many many people for various reasons. Ie I own 2 properties and I live in neither (house that I bought for my parents 1500km away, investment apartment in the mountains). I rent, because a) it doesn't make much sense to buy a property in traditional sense here where I live, too costly; b) we're not yet stabilized on location with first kid coming, and pinning us down to specific place before this is clear might be a huge mistake on many levels and massive stressor for our lives and relationship. We might end up not buying anything else till rest of our lives, dunno now.

Others might have other reasons for similar state.

I think jdmichal’s point was that if you don’t own a property, you’ll lose money (in the form of increased rent) if the real estate market goes up. In effect, you are born with a short position on the market just by needing a place to live, and owning your primary residence gets you to neutral.

I mean, I guess I could refine it to say "primary residence" instead of "first property"? Otherwise, yea it's an analogy and it will break down at some point.

This is more meant to attack the idea of a primary residence being an "investment". If people insist on calling it an investment, then it's fair for me to insist that it's only covering a short position, because you need somewhere to live.