re: Who decided that owning a house is the American Dream?

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I think it's a bit more important than most common stuff.

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You are conflating having a place to live with owning a structure I think.

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You are conflating having a place to live with owning a structure I think.

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There are many people that choose to not to own a home, especially in big cities. I get that part of what you're saying.

However, those people also get fricked on rent prices with the current landscape where too many hands are exacting profits off real estate to the point that home prices continue to balloon in relation to paychecks.

Rent doubling in a period during which their salary only rose 10% cuts into their dream of "free time" too.

One big problem isn’t the dream of owning a house but think tanks full of investors dreaming of owning 25,000 of them.

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You are conflating having a place to live with owning a structure I think.

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No I'm not. I understand renting is beneficial to certain people, especially for people who move around frequently. But generally one would prefer ownership of something so important and you spend so much time in and raise families in and part of your net worth. Hence why that's tied to the American Dream.

Mortgage brokers, realtors and developes.

Dreams can be and often are nightmares. Owning a pile of bricks is often a nightmare. It certainly is not an investment. If you consider the interest, taxes, maintenance and opportunity costs any appreciation in value is most likely going to go to real estate commissions when you kids sale it so you can get into a half assed assisted living facility....

The only advantage is the sense of owning something which is often times a fantasy....owning a pile of bricks can keep you anchored in place, eats up a lot of your time or money in maintenance and they are building the damned things almost faster than they can find buyers for them....other than having to have shelter there is almost no advantage to owning over renting for most people....

I don't think there is some giant DeBeers like real estate cartel that has falsely convinced people that owning a home is a better idea than having a landlord that you are beholden too. Pretty sure that is ingrained in most people.

I do see groups pushing the "You will own nothing and be happy" narrative because they seem to feel full control of their lives by the government equals freedom.

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If I live in my house for 15 years on a 15 year mortgage, I can sell this house (which I will own outright) for loads of cash

If I live in an apartment for 15 years and I move out, I can sell that apartment for $0 when I move out

What is there to debate?

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Yes, you can sell the house but you paid an awful lot for it over the years including the interest, taxes and maintenance....and it either took a lot of your time or money to maintain it. No, you can't sell the rental but when the roof goes bad or HVAC you aren't stuck with a $20-$50K bill. When you get rid of the rental you ain't out 3-7% of the sale price in real estate commissions. FInally if you are young and own a home and a job offer comes along which would require relocating it may be the pile of bricks makes accepting that job unrealistic...it happens pretty damned often.

I bought my first home when I was 22 years old and I am 60 this August. We have owned 7 that were our primary homes and over the years we have had, at times 3-4 rental properties (none now thank the christ). I suspect we have conservatively paid about $250K in those 38 years in taxes, interest, insurance, maintenance and real estate fees. We have probably, conservatively, $600K in mortgage principal in those 38 years. We have about $500k in equity in our current and only house we own today. Conservatively we have paid about $850K for various houses and if we sold ours right now for top dollar we might see $550K. It would have cost us about $300k over that time to own those homes. Had we rented at an average of $1500 we would have spent about $700K or $400K more than had we bought. For $400k we ran the risk of losing value to an economic downturn, we had some opportunity costs although not much because we have managed to mostly get reimbursed for relocating and we spent a lot of time maintaining homes that we could have spent doing other things. Its not a great investment and its not for everyone...

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Prior to WW2 less than 45% of Americans owned their own home (paid for or mortgaged). For many centuries prior to the late 50s most of the human race lived in a rental...almost everyone did. If anything is steeped in our dna it is renting...

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Last time I checked, the percentage of homeowners in the U.S. hasn’t changed much in 50 years.

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Things in Europe are still that way with feudal landowners being replaced by government largesse from confiscatory tax rates

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I worked in Europe for a European company for 5 and a half years. A little less than 45% of my salary was withheld from my check for taxes. The amount withheld, all called "taxes" paid for my healthcare, pension, state, local and federal taxes as well as my social security. When you look at federal and state income taxes in the US, health insurance premiums - the individuals share as well as their employers share, social security including the employee's and employer's "contribution" and finally pension most Americans are pushing about the same tax rate. The pension, healthcare and benefits enjoyed by employees in Europe are unheard of in the US. The horror stories of waiting for health care is a lie...it doesn't happen nearly as often as it does in the US and no one in Europe is denied care because they have no insurance because they all have insurance....one person denied in the US makes the difference between the two infinite in nature mathematically. I lived it, I know, European employees are far better off than US employees....they do not make as much but they have much better benefits and can retire comfortably earlier...and live large in retirement and not be a burden on their children.

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hen you look at history, the USA was the fist country that from the beginning allowed landownership to commoners.

In Europe, most countries did not allow ownership of land for commoners until the late 1800s.

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This. The settlers came here mostly because they saw an opportunity to have something of their own, something that was largely denied them back in their home country.

Even many of the conquistadors were second and third sons, and therefore would inherit nothing. Come to the Americas and you had a chance to carve out large land holding and great weath.

It's in our DNA.