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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (3731)	7/31/2002 4:54:48 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

.... ((The house is an expense not an investment. There is a decided difference between the two. This is why they have different tax treatments.)) On the basis of your logic, I expect you believe the purchase of diamonds should be subsidized by a government welfare program as they are an expense rather than an investment. Or perhaps a public subsidy for gold jewelry, but not for gold bars. More to the point, why provide a welfare program for the expense of home ownership but not for the expense of home rental? Indeed, a home rental is more wholly an expense while a home is partially expense {known as the imputed rent}, and partially an investment. I think you can clearly see your arguments are specious and entirely ungrounded in any basis other than that of the welfare recipient's insistence on their special right of entitlement to live at public expense. .... ((Never would I make such a stupid socialist argument.)) How else would you characterize your argument that the public should subsidize your "living expense" with a special welfare program. Personally I think the entire expense of our government should be bourne by the nation of France so that our taxes could be eliminated, but this is unlikely to happen. So we must each pay our own portion of the public expense. Your special welfare program tax reduction comes out of my pocket. You seem to be stuck on the idea that if I object to subsidizing your welfare tax rebate program, that I could not be a capitalist. Quite to the contrary, I merely find your desire to pay your taxes with my wallet highly objectionable. Get a second job and pay your fair share. .... ((I think if you compared residential real estate in aggregate you would find it has a poor investment return when compared to other types of investments like stocks.)) Actually over long periods of time the return from real estate should be identical to other investments such as stock. If you believe the return is less, you probably have not properly determined the true Imputed Rent you have derived from living in the home. But a clear view of this figure would be eye opening. You would most likely discover the investment has been quite good but you have been living far beyond your means, using more housing than you can rationally afford. This is the natural outcome of government subsidized goods - people consume far more than their income would dictate because "someone else" is paying a portion of the cost.