Interesting question: Is home ownership becoming the new "college degree"?

This is a clip from Graham Stephan's Iced Coffee Hour Podcast. His guests are "The Money Guys', who have their own consumer-finance podcast. They're really, really good at communicating all sorts of finance tips and the episode was pretty great. I highly recommend ( Full show LINK)



However, this specific clip goes into detail comparing how owning a home in today's environment may mirror our hindsight bias with overspending (and, more specifically, over-borrowing) for college degrees. This is the Gemini summary:

quote:

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A home is a life decision, not just an investment: Buying a primary residence is more about a long-term plan and putting down roots than it is about making a profit [00:13].

Current market challenges: The video acknowledges that high prices and interest rates make it a difficult time to buy [00:22].

The "College Analogy": A "hot take" is presented that home ownership could become similar to college, where future generations may regret taking on significant debt for it [02:13]. However, both can be good decisions if approached with intentionality [04:06].

Market dynamics: The hosts discuss how government subsidies can influence housing prices, and they express concern about people becoming too comfortable with debt [06:13]. They also emphasize that a house is a "use asset" and not something to bet your entire financial well-being on [08:39, 12:54].

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To summarize it even further, you can go to 2:21 and hear the start of that specific digression, but GS (and he admits it's a hot take as of now) postulates that many people may look back in 30 years and see home ownership the way so many see their college degrees/debt. Just as people didn't need expensive degrees for certain jobs, people may get saddled with mortgages the same way they are with SL debt, without the appreciation you'd expect from the "investment".

And, clearly, we're speaking generally. Just like some people pick the right college path, even with massive SLs, some people are going to get the right deals on their home. The video does get into making good decisions and all of that. But the general paradigm may be flipping, and we may be on the front-end of that issue.

But, moving forward, these will be the likely 2 biggest financial decisions most consumers ever make. So they're for sure related in that way.

Here is an unrelated, 29-minute video from Zac Rios with mutiple stories about home buyer remorse in 2025. This video starts off with a clip from another video saying 82% of homebuyers from 2023 and 2024 now regret it. If that's anywhere near true, and we finally see housing market price corrections, holy shite.