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A comment on Maybe Treating Housing as an Investment Was a Colossal Mistake. Parent comment

Re:Maybe Treating Housing as an Investment Was a Colossal Mi... by sokoloff on Monday March 06, 2023 @12:53PM (#35044642)
A down payment of 20% provides some of that exact cushion (and makes it less likely for a borrower to casually walk away from a house that fell in value or was otherwise a poor purchase).
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Re:Maybe Treating Housing as an Investment Was a Colossal Mi... by Retric on Monday March 06, 2023 @01:56PM (#35045850)
In theory sure, but 20% is an arbitrary regulation not some measurement of risk.
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Re:Maybe Treating Housing as an Investment Was a Colossal Mi... by sokoloff on Monday March 06, 2023 @02:01PM (#35045927)
Do you think it was chosen without any regard to the risk-mitigation that it offered?
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Re:Maybe Treating Housing as an Investment Was a Colossal Mi... by Retric on Monday March 06, 2023 @06:09PM (#35049143)
Any regard is a really low standard, minimal is more accurate. You don’t end up with nice round numbers like 20% which never change from calculating some formula.
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Re:Maybe Treating Housing as an Investment Was a Colossal Mi... by quonn on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @02:49AM (#35052711)
If you look between countries you would see that it‘s usually around 15-25%. So it‘s around 20%, almost everywhere.
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Re:Maybe Treating Housing as an Investment Was a Colossal Mi... by Retric on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @09:22AM (#35055632)
The global range is wider than that and reflects the reasonable range of this kind of regulation. If it’s say 75% then what’s the point of a loan? On the other hand if it’s 1% what’s the point of the regulation?

Regulators are basically picking a number between 3.5% to 35% and 20% is a nice round number in the middle of that range.

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