alt Hacker NewsThis has the rather tone deaf sound of “if you just had financial security, you wouldn’t need to use loans to survive, then you could use them to invest!”.
Which rather misses the point that many people using these tools don’t have financial security, and don’t have the option to invest like that.
Saying that mortgages can be used to buy investment properties doesn’t change the fact that most people use them to provide basic physical security. I.e. a literal roof over their head, that they can’t be taken away with little notice by their landlord for reasons completely beyond their control.
I’ve you’ve never grown up in an environment where the roof over your head isn’t a certainty, and indeed having a different roof over your head every few years is a certainty. Then it can be rather hard to understand why not everyone considers property just an investment opportunity.
> I.e. a literal roof over their head, that they can’t be taken away with little notice by their landlord for reasons completely beyond their control.
Yeah. Before I bought my home four years ago, three of the last four landlords I'd had had promised long term stability, only to non-renew the lease after the first year (for "other" reasons: "Wife thought she'd like the country, we're moving back to the city", "We want a smaller mortgage payment on our primary home", We're going to renovate and sell"). It's a lot of fun moving a family every year. Especially when around here you also have to come up with first, last, security and other fees and can easily be looking at $10K+ just to move.