Is owning a home mostly a bad thing?

I agree.

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All I see is a white box.

 

ok . . . but with this advice he is a current homeowner. Maybe he has had enough and eventually will be a renter.

 

Then he falls into the category of being wealthy. He points out that if you have money, you can afford luxury. For the rest of us, it is a trap.

Owning a home enslaves most people for thirty years not only to the mortgage, but to RE taxes and upkeep. For people that can't save and invest, owning a home is better than not as long as they don't treat their home like an ATM machine. But even this assumes some luck.

 

I get white box too so I done some "copy and pasting" this from a prior thread; this site sure does hate owning a home.

From a site, Free By 50 which uses Shiller's housing data.

Home price appreciation

1890 to 2007 3.44%
1900 to 2007 4.22%
1920 to 2007 4.03%
1948 to 2007 4.87%


Or roughly splitting up before WWII and after:
1890 to 1939 0.75%
1940 to 2007 5.45%

Or the past 100 years, 1907 to 2007 : 3.78%

If you break it down into decade chunks we get:

1890's 0.53%
1900's 1.40%
1910's 3.30%
1920's -0.70%
1930's -0.45%
1940's 8.16%
1950's 2.67%
1960's 2.57%
1970's 8.12%
1980's 5.86%
1990's 2.84%
2000+ 9.27%

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So you live in an asset that appreciates 4-5% in the modern era, and if its in an area that's not dependent on manufacturing, that's even better. Of course the 2000 period is not going to be 9% but with all the negativity, it's buying time.

 

Shift-refresh the page. It should load the video. Otherwise quit your browser and come back in.

 

Home is not an asset, you know this right? Trust me after owning a couple homes I know the liability a home really is.

 

He's right if, and this is an enormous if, you can invest your money wisely. Most people are better off with crappy returns or even small losses than they would be investing that money on their own in some stupid investments.

 

Cubism. It's all the rage.

 

But the flip side is also a problem. What about people that treat their homes like an ATM machine? It is one thing to roll college loans or house repairs into your mortgage, another to roll CC debt into it.

Two sides of the same coin.