Renting could never compare to owning, as Equity is the biggest source of wealth for the middle class in the US. Not owning equity to pass on to your kids is one of the worst mistakes you can make. IF you can afford that sort of thing.
Raising your kid(s) right is better than passing any monetary wealth on to them. If they grow up knowing that they’re set and will inherit your money/house, they may get lazy and just depend on that wealth. That money will be gone after the 3rd generation.
Your parents zipcode is the best indicator of your success in life. We don’t live in a merit based situation. This isn’t up for debate. Most Americans get most of their wealth as the equity their parents owned that they got from their parents all the way back to the homestead act. My FIL has a nice house. His dad bought it for him with a home equity loan. He bought at least three of his kids homes with home equity loans (no not the one I married) he still owns that home, and his kids do too, and their kids will probably have their parents help them with buying a home. That’s the majorly of net worth of all of these people.
How have we screwed up as a society, much less species, when shelter is seen as a financial investment rather than what it is, a thing we literally need to survive?
Equity is pointless when your $30,000 roof and $20,000 HVAC break at the same time and you’re taking out a 20 year home equity loan to replace them. (And good luck with the $70,000 windows.)
Not at all, these are (roughly) prices for 2-3 bedroom single-family homes. If curious, check AIs for any reasonably successful region around the country like Raleigh, San Jose, Austin, etc. Prices are about the same. I looked up the cost for a dual system for a larger home (that would have 2x AC, 2x furnace) and that jumped to $30k-40k for HVAC. Water heater install (gas, tank) can run $800-3000 depending on the market.
Asking others for prices for windows, I think the spread was somewhere between $50k-90k, although it’s been a while since I asked peeps. That’s before actually going after specialty windows.
Prices have skyrocketed since the pandemic.
I don’t know about that - I had my roof replaced (by insurance thankfully) about a year ago, and it was ~26k. HVAC out of pocket a couple years ago was about 15k. Not fun!
Leaving out the last sentence in your quoting does a disservice to what they were pointing out.
They weren’t saying anyone deserves to be poor. They weren’t saying that real estate being an investment is ideal or how it should be.
The housing market is historically, currently, and prospectively an investment, and one of the only high-return, low-risk investments available to the middle class. If you can play that game and don’t, then you are making a mistake, especially if you have kids.
