home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

[Spartacus]

Anyone here ever read Daniel Gilbert?

the things you think will make you happy, don't?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/french/french65.html

Something keeps coming back to me again and again - US happiness and life satisfaction peaked in the late 1940s, and home ownership was half what it is today - renting was the norm.

I'm wondering if part of this is that a house lets one accumulate a ton of crap - each item of crap makes one happy for a week (and no more, as one acclimates to it), and is thereafter an eternal burden in cleaning, storage, insurance, moving, etc ...

[zoog]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

Anyone here ever read Daniel Gilbert?

the things you think will make you happy, don't?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/french/french65.html

Something keeps coming back to me again and again - US happiness and life satisfaction peaked in the late 1940s, and home ownership was half what it is today - renting was the norm.

I'm wondering if part of this is that a house lets one accumulate a ton of crap - each item of crap makes one happy for a week (and no more, as one acclimates to it), and is thereafter an eternal burden in cleaning, storage, insurance, moving, etc ...

That's all your house is, it's a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get... more stuff! - George Carlin

George Carlin Talks About Stuff

I remember, say 20 years ago, the first sign that people had more stuff than they knew what to do with was when they started parking their cars on the driveway. You only really knew for sure if you happened by and they had the garage door open, revealing a wall of boxes.

Now they've accumulated even more junk, and are so desperate to find a place to keep it, they've given up their pride and ordered a PODS. With up to a month to load the thing up before it gets hauled off to the storage location, it becomes a semi-permanent feature at the curb.

Over the last 30 years, the Self Storage Industry in the United States has been the fastest-growing sector of the commercial real estate market...

Today, there are over 51,000 self storage facilities located in the United States as of 2007 with self storage revenues topping $22 billion dollars in 2006 alone. This explosive growth has pushed the market capitalization of the self storage industry in the U.S. to well over $220 billion.

$22 billion dollars a year to store all the stuff we don't need. Have a national garage sale, you say? Right, so we can buy each other's stuff... and put it back in our storage units. Here's a call for American ingenuity; we need to invent a power generator that runs on unwanted junk.

[grapejelly]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

You could say that today's homeowners are often attached to the land in the manner of serfs if you think about it.

It is hard for people to see that they are better off in many cases walking away. But I think this will become common knowledge in a year or two -- and sentiment towards owning a home will be in the tank compared to what it is today.

[FRED]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

We foresee the development of a post credit bubble Balanced Life movement. It's three main tenets are:

1. Enough wealth to not have to work for anyone you don't want to work for.

2. Enough wealth to allow a modest income from self-employment one enjoys.

3. Can be achieved for a broad range of incomes via decrease in cash flow needs.

A Balanced Life "member" can appear to be like any other person, for example, living in a rented apartment except that this person will be known and respected for his or her belief in:

1. Time for Friends, Family and Health come before time spent making Money.

2. Less focus on getting what you want, more focus on wanting what you have.

3. Reduced consumption of non-renewable resources.

[Spartacus]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

If I had not been fired a number of times in the 90s and had my income growth stalled, I would be financially self sufficient now.

I was following the plan in this book

http://www.simpleliving.net/main/category.asp?catid=2

(no budgeting involved, BTW) and next time I find consistent work (there's a first time for everything, or so I hear ...) I'll be on it again.

We foresee the development of a post credit bubble Balanced Life movement. It's three main tenets are:

1. Enough wealth to not have to work for anyone you don't want to work for.

2. Enough wealth to allow a modest income from self-employment one enjoys.

3. Can be achieved for a broad range of incomes via decrease in cash flow needs.

A Balanced Life "member" can appear to be like any other person, for example, living in a rented apartment except that this person will be known and respected for his or her belief in:

1. Time for Friends, Family and Health come before time spent making Money.

2. Less focus on getting what you want, more focus on wanting what you have.

3. Reduced consumption of non-renewable resources.

[metalman]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

We foresee the development of a post credit bubble Balanced Life movement. It's three main tenets are:

1. Enough wealth to not have to work for anyone you don't want to work for.

2. Enough wealth to allow a modest income from self-employment one enjoys.

3. Can be achieved for a broad range of incomes via decrease in cash flow needs.

A Balanced Life "member" can appear to be like any other person, for example, living in a rented apartment except that this person will be known and respected for his or her belief in:

1. Time for Friends, Family and Health come before time spent making Money.

2. Less focus on getting what you want, more focus on wanting what you have.

3. Reduced consumption of non-renewable resources.

[Thompson, posing as a reporter for The Washington Post, is alone in an airport restroom when the "Candidate" (Richard Nixon) enters and starts using the urinal.]

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Hi sir, it's Harris from the Post. Can I get you anything sir?

Candidate: How's the family Harris?

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Oh the family, well that's bad news. The screwheads finally came and took my daughter away. Let me ask you a question sir, what is this country doing for the doomed? There are two kinds of people in this country, the doomed and the screwheads. Savage tribal thugs who live off their legal incomes, brow deep out there; no respect for human dignity. They don't know what you and I understand, you know what I mean.

Candidate: You ever play football, Harris?

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Yes sir, thank you sir. I played in college, and they're gonna get your daughter too sir. I've heard their rallies, they like Julie but Tricia... and they really hate you sir. You know that one and a half of the State Senate of Utah are screwheads. You know I was never really frightened by the bopheads and the potheads with their silliness never really frightened me either, but these goddam screwheads, they terrify me. And the poor doomed, the young, and the silly, the honest, the weak, the Italians ... they're doomed, they're lost, they're helpless, they're somebody else's meal, they're like pigs in the wilderness.

Candidate: Come here Harris, come here. Fuck the doomed!

let's make it a political party and call it the "Doomed Party"!

[Jeff]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

A great man (Jimmy Buffet) once said, "The secret to being happy is to want what you have." Works for me.

[jk]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

A great man (Jimmy Buffet) once said, "The secret to being happy is to want what you have." Works for me.

jeff, you can't post this 7 minutes after writing a post telling us about your self-sufficient farm in costa rica and your "emotionally significant" residual real-estate holdings in the u.s.:rolleyes:;)

[Guest]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

Yeah Jeff -

But "wanting what you have" becomes considerably easier a belief system if one retired at 50 and is ensconced cosily in a place where one's retirement dollars allow one to live really well, no?

Perhaps your observation comes up short on the situations many others of your countrymen find themselves in? I certainly wish you the very best in what you've accomplished, and I think I expressed that to you quite sincerely elsewhere before. But it may be that observing "the secret is in wanting what you have" does not adequately examine the fact that if we all accomplished it, your quiet haven in Costa Rica would be seriously overcrowded and a lot pricier by now?

How would you explain "the secret is in wanting what you have" to someone economically trapped in some decaying US inner city?

If you've been blessed with some good outcomes early enough in life to fully savor the possibility of a new chapter, it's "good luck" for you personally, to keep the gritty details of what you escaped from well in mind, and not refer to them as being escapable with mere panaceas.

Respectfully.

[Andreuccio]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

jeff, you can't post this 7 minutes after writing a post telling us about your self-sufficient farm in costa rica and your "emotionally significant" residual real-estate holdings in the u.s.:rolleyes:;)

The secret to being happy is having what Jeff has.

[GRG55]

Re: home ownership - one of the great hoaxes ?

jeff, you can't post this 7 minutes after writing a post telling us about your self-sufficient farm in costa rica and your "emotionally significant" residual real-estate holdings in the u.s.:rolleyes:;)

I haven't got to Jeff's post about this yet, but the very idea of a "self sufficient farm" in a world where governments everywhere fall all over themselves to subsidize that industry is almost inconceivable... :eek: