alt Hacker NewsThis kinda reminds me of student loans, why not get as many people as possible into 6 figure debt?
Yes mortgage is often cheaper than rental, but the whole tradeoff is the commitment, just like all kinds of services, if you pay 40 years up front you can get a good deal, but do you really want to take out a loan to do that?
Limiting landlords ability to buy property is reducing demand for construction, you want to increase demand for housing, not decrease it.
As I said in a sibling thread, it does suck that property owners are incentivized to raise their property values, preventing supply from reacting to demand.
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> This kinda reminds me of student loans, why not get as many people as possible into 6 figure debt?
Didn't we already try that with housing?
I don't think this is a purely financial decision - my position on that is it's not a good investment if you're buying a single home. Taking on 5x leverage on a hugely concentrated asset is insane to me if it's a large % of your net worth
The bigger thing, though, is so many people are currently priced out from owning something for themselves. Your home is such a fundamental part of your life and for a lot of people renting fucking sucks. They can't live their lives the way they want to. To have that be the case because others are buying it up to profit? Ehh..
That "less commitment" argument assumes that renters are content to be paying higher-than-mortgage costs for a property they'll never own. If they are, then it's true that the rental system is benefiting them. If they'd rather own their homes and be paying a mortgage, then the rental system is a hindrance.
My intuition is that the majority of renters would rather be owners paying mortgages. This is less true of certain demographics (young people, students) and more true of others (older people, families).
I also wouldn't characterize being a renter as low-commitment. Say you're renting a place for 1.2k a month. When you sign a year lease, you're committing to pay 1.2k x 12 in rent, plus (at least) a month of security deposit, for a total of 15.6k. That may not be a down payment, but it's still a huge commitment, especially given how hard it is to assess potential problems with a living space before you've actually lived there.