Every statistic under the sun tells us that some obscenely large percentage of Americans (often 50%+) cannot afford $1000 emergencies, do not have adequate health coverage, can’t afford to retire and are often on the verge of bankruptcy due an innumerable # of reasons. How did these same people come up with cash to own a home?
I understand they might have owned their homes since pre pandemic times, but homes have not been cheap for a very long time. You’d still need substantive amounts of cash to own/maintain one and be careful to have reached that level of cash accumulation without going bankrupt in the process. Obviously some people are more comfortable with debt (credit cards or otherwise) than others, but I find it hard to believe that a whopping 60+% of major asset owning class got there by just being lucky with money.
In: Economics
They don’t actually own them outright. They have mortgages. Mortgages are loans, loans are debts.
Mortgages often can have terms built in, like home insurance (a whopper of an annual cost) and property tax (also a whopper of an annual cost, in many American areas).
But even with a mortgage in place you can call yourself a homeowner, and the monthly expense doesn’t change (under ‘normal’ circumstances, although ‘normal’ isn’t normal anymore).
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