>Almost 40% of homes in America are owned free and clear (no mortgage).
looking merely at owned homes is ignoring everybody that rents. Renters falling behind on their rent are equally likely to be evicted as soon as the moratoriums are listed.
(and that in fact goes to my point about "your rent/mortgage is someone else's asset", a renter who's not making mortgage payments is probably still putting someone else's mortgage in the red and causing havoc in the rest of the financial system. I don't personally shed too much of a tier for the personal finances of highly overleveraged landlords doing the BRRRR type bullshit, it's been screwing up pricing for renters for a decade now, but it's a problem for the rest of the financial system too.)
Also, as another poster mentioned, the demographics of home ownership tilt very differently. Lots of boomers own their homes, in many cases free and clear. The numbers for people in their 30s (let alone 20s) are pretty low these days, so your statistic basically ignores everyone under 50.
(And in fact even if we got younger people into homes, the same wealth transfer that boomers enjoyed probably cannot be replicated - it was artificially created by lowering interest rates from the highs of 19% in the 70s/80s down to basically 0% now, allowing people to finance much larger amounts of money and causing the underlying asset values to soar. Nor would it be desirable to do so.)
And in general I disagree with your comment further down in the thread about "you can say anything with statistics". The obvious thrust of that argument is: gee, I guess we better just not use statistics and argue about feelings instead. That's so much better.
It's pretty much an argument made by people whose positions can't be justified by actual data - they don't reconsider their positions, they just want to stop looking at the data.
The point is that many statistics are worse than 'damned lies' because they are made-up to prove a point. It's like a tobacco company paying for research that shows nicotine is not addictive in 66% of people tested. I just made that up as an example. It's not true.
So before you can have any faith in stats, you have to know the source and how the research was funded and by whom (this is before we even begin to talk about methodology flaws). If you do not know that then you cannot trust the stats at all. They are indeed worse than damned lies.
looking merely at owned homes is ignoring everybody that rents. Renters falling behind on their rent are equally likely to be evicted as soon as the moratoriums are listed.
(and that in fact goes to my point about "your rent/mortgage is someone else's asset", a renter who's not making mortgage payments is probably still putting someone else's mortgage in the red and causing havoc in the rest of the financial system. I don't personally shed too much of a tier for the personal finances of highly overleveraged landlords doing the BRRRR type bullshit, it's been screwing up pricing for renters for a decade now, but it's a problem for the rest of the financial system too.)
BRRRR: https://investfourmore.com/brrrr-method/
Also, as another poster mentioned, the demographics of home ownership tilt very differently. Lots of boomers own their homes, in many cases free and clear. The numbers for people in their 30s (let alone 20s) are pretty low these days, so your statistic basically ignores everyone under 50.
(And in fact even if we got younger people into homes, the same wealth transfer that boomers enjoyed probably cannot be replicated - it was artificially created by lowering interest rates from the highs of 19% in the 70s/80s down to basically 0% now, allowing people to finance much larger amounts of money and causing the underlying asset values to soar. Nor would it be desirable to do so.)
And in general I disagree with your comment further down in the thread about "you can say anything with statistics". The obvious thrust of that argument is: gee, I guess we better just not use statistics and argue about feelings instead. That's so much better.
It's pretty much an argument made by people whose positions can't be justified by actual data - they don't reconsider their positions, they just want to stop looking at the data.