People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

idk, it sounds like you're 20-25% less likely to be an 'entrepreneur' if you buy a home but it's mostly linked to the first couple years of home ownership and, I would bet, correlated to market

also highly skeptical of the fact that said articles all refer to home ownership as an "investment" when it is probably a mostly emotional choice rather than a logical one in the current market

And by market, I mean that my house cost < $150k and it's a common practice to negotiate that the seller pay closing costs around here? That kind of kills the "omg all your money is gone" argument. Big time sink and maintenance is costly, though.

But there are all differences in the UK and US housing markets that would make their conclusions difficult to transfer across the pond, right?

yes, very different. not saying this invalidates the findings, but it'd be interesting to look at the states too

xp so it's ok for them to be forced to leave? they shouldn't have options? i guess i have no idea what you're saying here... the best way to combat gentrification is for everyone to rent?

― akadarbarijava (psychgawsple), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 4:52 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well go find the gentrification thread because 'fighting gentrification' is another issue / not relevant to 95% of the owners and renters in america

FWIW I don't believe that having everyone move whereever for the best job they can possibly get all the time is an optimal outcome. That's exactly the kind of free market argument I think is bunk.

― click here if you want to load them all (Hurting 2), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 4:42 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not a 'free market argument' anymore than 'we should make life better for poor people' is a 'free market argument'. the types of people who are most economically trapped by home ownership are generally not rich people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate

as a whole there's no reason to believe that having a society w/ an extremely high homeownership rate is:
a. good for the economy
b. something 'natural' for a developed country
c. something that's good for poor people

In a properly functioning housing (ownership) market there really shouldn't be a widespread phenomenon of "trapped by home ownership."

no, buying and selling a house has extremely high transaction costs, even in a properly functioning housing market

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate

as a whole there's no reason to believe that having a society w/ an extremely high homeownership rate is:
a. good for the economy
b. something 'natural' for a developed country
c. something that's good for poor people

― iatee, Tuesday, July 10, 2012 6:25 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, do I even have to explain the myriad reasons why your link does absolutely nothing to bolster your argument?

wow bulgaria

who knew

the link doesn't have anything to do w/ c. but there's pretty clearly no correlation between 'rich country' and 'high ownership rate', if anything there's a fairly strong correlation going the other direction.

But I haven't made any arguments that home ownership is good for per capita GDP that has nothing to do with my point whatsoever.

Although, for what it's worth, no, there is not a strong correlation in the other direction based on that list.

not to mention that the list only has 22 countries on it, the majority of which are relatively rich!

alright what was your point, I'm not opening up this entire thread

Plus I could easily spin it a different way -- there isn't a single third-world country on that list other than arguably Palestine, which is anomolous for a number of reasons.

oh yeah the 'support network' theory, yeah I think that's kinda nonsense, do you think children in germany and denmark are somehow socially maladjusted by their lack of the 'support network' that comes w/ home ownership

really there's no reason to believe that having a homeownership rate under 50% is gonna fuck up yr kids, what's gonna fuck up your kids is them living in america

I don't know enough about German society to respond to that at all.

I included denmark so you couldn't take the logical 'low homeownership rate' = socially maladjusted = rise of the nazis

really though is there some reason to believe that the way we're doing things is 'better' in any sense

I do know that it sucks to get forced out of the apartment you've been living in for only a year and pushed into an entirely different neighborhood and basically having to start over with schools and friends. And I do know that moving is one of the largest psychological stressors.

Wait so iatee, your argument is basically "Grandpa's been smoking for years, and he's healthy"?

no my argument is that grandpa's been smoking for years and he is gonna die of cancer, grandpa is america

I don't know enough about German society to respond to that at all.

lol neither does anybody else, arguments like these are about cherrypicking data to support a hypothesis you wouldn't veer from if the relevant counterexample were staring you right in the face, c'mon get on board man

well go find the gentrification thread because 'fighting gentrification' is another issue / not relevant to 95% of the owners and renters in america

what i was saying was that, in certain circumstances (perhaps this is the other 5% as you put it, or perhaps this is more about cultural/emotional/financial types of circumstance), home ownership could be seen as a legitimate wealth-building option that could have other positive externalities. though i agree with you that home-ownership is not the uniformly beneficial cure for economic woes that many make it out to be

also the stress that comes w/ finding a place in nyc is due to the nyc renter's market being fucked up. in a world w/ fewer supply restrictions the nyc renter's market wouldn't be the clusterfuck it is today and turnover would be slower because prices wouldn't change as quickly. and I mean moving sux regardless but it still gives people flexibility - again, that's most important for poor people, who are already constrained in more ways than middle class and rich people.

Yeah but renting = someone else gets to make a lot of money off the fact that the situation is fucked up, at your expense, whereas owning = you get to share some of the benefits or at least avoid some of the detriments.

choosing to move towards opportunity or w/e and being forced to move (which doesn't just happen in nyc) are very different

home ownership isn't 'wealth-building' anymore than putting that same money in a safe investment is wealth-building. it's not a super great investment, historically. that's fine if you're a middle class person who believes that they have very stable long-term employment and doesn't want to deal w/ the hassle of moving. there are ~reasons to own~. there are even more reasons that way too many people own in america.

Yeah but renting = someone else gets to make a lot of money off the fact that the situation is fucked up, at your expense, whereas owning = you get to share some of the benefits or at least avoid some of the detriments.

― click here if you want to load them all (Hurting 2), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 5:47 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, in nyc, which is one of the few markets in america prob 'worth it' in the investment sense.

the 'burbs are so boring though, and the only places i will ever be able to afford to buy in my lifetime are in the burbs of craptown USA and that way likes suckiness.

what do you think is a super great investment historically, iatee

also anecdotally i was talking to a dude outside a bar and he was jazzed to move out of DC because he wanted to "own land" and he was such a tool so I think that people that are really into the idea of "owning land" are probably tools or at least exhibit tool-ish attributes.

Also I think you're missing that the current market is pushing more people into renting, which in turn is lowering vacancy rates and gradually turning other rental markets outside NYC into much more of a clusterfuck

stock market indices xp

Also I think you're missing that the current market is pushing more people into renting, which in turn is lowering vacancy rates and gradually turning other rental markets outside NYC into much more of a clusterfuck

― click here if you want to load them all (Hurting 2), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 5:52 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a weird ass argument

'the current market' is a problem, in any case

anyway as far as 'super great investment' goes, here's the expert back in 2007:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/09/real_estate/shiller.moneymag/index.htm

Question: So how rich can you get on real estate?

Answer: From 1890 through 1990, the return on residential real estate was just about zero after inflation.

My suburb lies where the orbital fumes sweep across the intercity line, just past the sewage plant where the exclusive golf course shades into the top secret missile range. It's a gnome-strewn wonderland of poisonous greenhouses, twinkling solar panels, speed bumps, and privet hedge condoms. We rise with the lark and turn in with the screaming ailerons of the Luton queue.

I'm not going give you any map references, though; there's already a rush of hipsters ruining the place. I see them browsing The Oldie in Sainsburys, a whole generation of gaga ladies with blue hair and ear piercings who think they have a god-given right to affect "ironic" seventies and eighties fashion (tiger prints with Eiffel Towers on, gothic roses, non-functional ribbons) just because they've really hit their seventies and eighties. I'm torn between creeping out at night with my spraycan to stencil "DIE YUPPY SCUM!" on Acacia Avenue, or just waiting until nature takes its course.

stock market indices xp

― iatee, Tuesday, July 10, 2012 6:52 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You do realize that the S&P is at roughly 1999 levels in NOMINAL dollars right now, right?

you said 'super great investment historically' not 'the most perfect, safe, investment ever'

the best investment is to have a hundred million dollars.

Well that's a good point, if you want to compare investments, you have to compare risk and volatility, not just appreciation.

I mean there are lots of other reasons the comparison doesn't make sense, e.g. the fact that, at least in the shorter term, real estate as an investment allows you to use leverage, and also that housing costs = money you have to spend regardless. If renting and buying costs are roughly equal, housing is at least putting your money in a generally inflation-protected, relatively low risk place while renting is not an investment at all.

Like it's not "do I take my housing money and buy a house, or should I put it in the stock market"

real estate is not an investment. your house is not going to turn into an ipad factory, it's going to turn into a worse house. and the 'leverage' that you are using is 'leverage' in the same way that a credit card is 'leverage'. and while you are losing risk in terms of 'where will I live' and 'how much will I pay per month', it comes at an enormous price.

like the fact that the word 'investment' even come up today is lol. it can be seen as an extremely low-return savings vehicle. in some markets it probably is a 'good decision' cause the price-to-rent ratio is fucked up - the fact that it *can* be cheaper has to do w/ the national shortage of cheap rental properties, which has to do w/ the fact that it's currently illegal to build them...almost everywhere that you'd want to build them. if I were giving advice to a middle class person who is planning on living in a city w/ an underserved rental market for the rest of their life, I prob wouldn't say 'rent forever'. but that's a different argument from whether it's a good thing that we're in this situation.

even 'comes' up

^ i think it was the article you posted that framed it this way to begin w/

i dunno about houses in general, but i think buying all of michigan would be a good investment.