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To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (145744)	1/23/2002 7:51:31 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 436258

Joan, I already had this argument with him over on the RE Crash thread. He said something about 20 years and I jumped on it. If there was a year I could get in a time machine and go back and put 25k into the stock market, it would be August 1982! Even if you were dumber than dirt and just threw it into an index fund it soundly beats sticking a like sum in real estate even after the last two years of drubbing.

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (145744)	1/23/2002 7:53:05 PM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

<<it is a life style that am willing to pay for.>> Exactly, and so are many other people. I don't quite know how it came to be assumed that anyone was promoting home ownership as an income-producing asset. The discussion has mainly been about why builder stocks won't go down, why home prices keep going up, why there isn't a credit crash in this country...yada yada. And Joan, you will have a place to live for the rest of your life, and your mortgage payment, if you still have one, was set in concrete many years ago--no one can make it go up except you, if you choose to refinance and make it bigger. The renter NEVER knows that. The renter also has to know that whatever money he invests in other places is safe--show me a safe place to put money and assure that it will still be there when I'm old, unless it's placed in low-return investments. If the homeowner takes advantage of the hefty tax deductions on his mortgage early in life, he can be in a better position to invest other money in higher-paying investments. And right there we have the reason that so many older people in this country have assets which they are passing along to their heirs, including valuable real estate itself.