The U.S. Housing Market vs. the Canadian Housing Market

Re:The U.S. Housing Market vs. the Canadian Housing Market by epistasis on Saturday September 09, 2023 @02:36PM (#37448742)

And if this was happening to home values, there would be a panic in the legislature and all sorts of policy to stop it and preserve home wealth.

Which is one of the reasons it runs me so wrong when people think their homes are not a of wealth.

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Re:The U.S. Housing Market vs. the Canadian Housing Market by stouset on Sunday September 10, 2023 @02:06PM (#37458370)

Homes are a form of wealth. They are not a liquid form of wealth, and they are more practically a store of wealth for the overwhelming majority of your life.

The one way to generally extract this gain in wealth is to downgrade (e.g., retire to a quiet place in the boonies), and that’s generally a one-time option and not something everyone wants to do.

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Re:The U.S. Housing Market vs. the Canadian Housing Market by epistasis on Monday September 11, 2023 @10:50AM (#37468119)

Liquidity isn't a yes no thing, it's on a spectrum. The legal structures around housing, in addition to the financial products, many invented by legislative force (e.g 30 year fixes rate mortgages), mean that one access cash via real estate much more easily than many other assets, without even having to transact that asset.

This is a remarkable feature of real estate as wealth.

While there are other forms of wealth with more liquidity, housing wealth and real estate really are up near the top of the ones that give a person access to cash.

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