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

To: GraceZ who wrote (6889)	11/17/2002 3:33:09 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

This same problem appears in statistics suggesting Americans have a very low rate of savings. The perversity of U.S. tax law since WW-II has shifted the preferred form of savings from bonds, stocks and banks to investing in an excessively valued home. Since home equity is not included in statistics of total savings, the savings rate has declined precipitously. Certainly the value of a home is not stable, but then neither are stocks which are included in statistics of savings. The current retirement tradition of selling your home and moving to a lower cost community, in order to live off your home equity, is new tradition peculiar to the post WW-II era. Congress in their wisdom have decided that our nation's wealth is best invested in large single-family homes rather than in factories or research and development. Apparently it's better for the productive assets to be sited in China. In coming years all Americans will be employed as gardeners, maids and handymen at each other's large homes.