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I was tacitly contrasting it with renting. After 30 years of renting, you still are going to be paying rent.
I was less commentating on the term of the loan and more on the total principal value. That said, for some insane reason, a 15-year mortgage also has a lower interest rate, so it is fundamentally the better option. But even with that, if you make $50k/year and are able to find a livable property for 75-80k, and get the 15-year, ostensibly there is little in one's way from paying it off in 7 to 10 years. Unfortunately livable houses for that price don't exist anymore for most of the US and making 50k is still a pipe dream. I don't even make that much and I have a Master's degree.
Not for everybody, but I’ve heard reasonable advice of getting the mortgage at a longer amortization period, then making extra payments. When I was looking it was typical to be allowed to increase the payment by 10-20% or to make additional payments up to 10-20% of the initial loan amount each year without penalty. That’s enough to potentially be paying it off in under 10 years without penalty(which is often in the range of 3 months simple interest, so still worthwhile if you unexpectedly come in to some money), but also gives you the flexibility of going back to the minimum payments if your financial situation changes.
Renting does make it cheaper/simpler to change accommodations though. Think things like starting a family and wanting to scale the household up from just two people to adding children and down again when those children move out. Renting makes it simpler to move closer to work, public transportation, schools, Etc. as a persons needs change. On the other hand, there’s also a lot of financial benefits to living in your own home: grants/rebates available for homeowners, not rental properties, being able to save costs by doing your own maintenance/renovations, etc..
Honestly, I have been renting for a year now and it has been horrendous. I don't think it's worth it honestly. I am paying about double what a mortgage would be and getting a house that the owners refuse to perform any maintenance on. I'm not about to do it as that is sweat equity that they are getting, not me. With the modern trend towards treating rentals as an investment instead if a business/responsibility, the mentality of landleeches is moving more and more towards cost minimization at any expense. It is an undeniable downward spiral that needs to be halted by force. Unfortunately tenants don't have the ability to do that and when 40%+ of single-family homes that hit the market are being purchased by equity firms and slumlords, driving the prices on the remaining homes well beyond their real value, it is a recipe for disaster.
At the current rate and trajectory, in the next 10 to 20 years, more than 90% of adults ages 25 to 50 will be renters. As the boomers die, some percentage of their homes will be passed to children, but some percentage of those will go on the market for some reason or another, which some percentage will then be snatched up as investment properties again. This is a logistic process, and while it would be functionally impossible to get it to 100%, numbers like 75% to 90% are infinitely more possible, and in fact, probably, without real governmental I intervention. (I actually have an Applied Mathematics degree, so this isn't me pulling things from my ass)
The other thing I didn’t think of is renting makes it a lot simpler to share accommodations. A group of 2-4 people can split the rent on a property that none of them would qualify for individually.
Agreed that the current situation parallels a lot of industries in that it’s concentrating wealth in the hands of those that are already ahead and it’s difficult for new people to become part of that system. Personally, I think the solution for any of these essential goods/services is crown corporations, which creates a standard of service that private industry has to compete with instead of being able to collude to maximize margins.
My solution was an adaptation of the NYC cab medallion system. Each city is allowed to provide medallions for up to a certain percentage of single-family residences to be rental properties and the medallion costs to maintain. It also comes along with rent caps based on the local cost of living and yearly property inspections by the city. One of the towns in my area actually did that last one because they actually care about being a good place to live, so they make some extra money on penalties or the overall property value for the town goes up because all of the rental properties are kept in very good condition. Win(city)-win(tenants)-accountability(landleeches).
Honestly, no city should want more than ~5% of single-family dwellings to be rentals. As you said, it is easier to get out of them. That means less reliable tax revenue, less people invested in the community, and potentially less community. I may be a math major, but I'm not an anthropology or sociology major, so that last one is definitely rectally sourced.
Also, I struggle, being in the exact situation where I need to get out from under an abusive landleech, to say that it is easy to move from rental to rental. Having to come up with 3k when we are already living and to mouth is really hard.
Oh, also, be careful suggesting cohabitation of multiple unrelated adults. Many cities have zoning ordinances prohibiting precisely that behavior. For instance:
Yes, you can have a couple of roommates, but if one of those roommates wants a partner to "move in" it becomes immediately illegal and actually grounds for eviction in some cases since you violated the zoning for the property.
Hmm…. I’ve never heard about those kinds of limits here. It’s not too uncommon for 3-5 people to split a house(which may or may not actually have 3-5 legal bedrooms) around here, though the trend seems to be splitting those houses into 2-3 legal suites, each of which might have multiple bedrooms.
I don’t think a medallion system is a solution though, as I understand that was brought in to artificially lower supply and increase revenue for the cab companies by limiting the number available. I do like the idea of more proactive enforcement of regulations to ensure that housing is kept in reasonable repair, but that can also increase prices since I’d venture most people put up with poor quality rentals due to them being the lowest cost; at least in terms of rent, though utility costs can outweigh that. If there was safe, clean, and affordable housing available then people trying to market sub-standard units wouldn’t get renters and would be forced to either upgrade the unit or sell.
The price hiking to cover the additional "costs of doing business" are specifically why I included a formula-based localized rent cap in the suggestion. The cost of doing business is for the business owners to figure out, not the customers. People have forgotten that. Hence the inflation. Hence the corporate plutocracy for an ad hoc governmental system. If you send someone to a convention, that doesn't go into your prices, that is a one-time cost that you incurred trying to expand your business. If you have to pay the city to withhold a single-family home from being accessible to ownership by a single family, that is the base market entry cost for being allowed to siphon money from someone who actually does things to get that money. That isn't something that gets passed on. I also want to add in that only individuals are allowed to own the medallions and they at least have to be residents of the county, if not the city itself. Money moves from the community to the community and builds the local economy instead of being sucked out I to some global holdings company never to be seen again. But that us my radical dream of a way to fix housing and work on the economy in a meaningful way.
It didn't take much to radicalize me though. Finding out that my landleechs directly obtained 25 rental properties in the city I'm in from landleeche who was retiring, getting a special mortgage that is not even available to us common folk that has basically 0 APR and effectively withholding 25 houses which my wife and I could have probably purchased at the time from going on sale, forcing us to rent instead of own like we wanted. Then treating us like we are the problem when I assert my rights. Yeah. Fuck landleeches, people's housing is not a meal ticket.