Peak Oil News and Message Boards

dolanbaker wrote:The article quoted in the original post at the start of this thread, real fantasy stuff!
But the reality is that the wealthy are buying up land & property everywhere and pulling the prices above what the average manual worker can ever afford to pay for property.

But a renter pays the entire cost of the property including property taxes and insurance so if the wealthy investor has paid too much for it they won't earn a profit.
The margin comes from the wealthy paying cash at a foreclosure sale both avoiding a mortgage with it's interest cost and buying it a a deep discount.
Current banking practices are making it unusually difficult for young people to buy but I expect that to change back with market fluctuations and political shakeups.
Currently in the USA 75 percent of married couples age 60 to 65 own their homes and thirty percent have the mortgage paid off.

vtsnowedin wrote: Currently in the USA 75 percent of married couples age 60 to 65 own their homes and thirty percent have the mortgage paid off.

It is shocking that only 30 percent of those seniors have managed to pay off their mortgages during some of the most affluent decades in America.

Ibon wrote:

vtsnowedin wrote: Currently in the USA 75 percent of married couples age 60 to 65 own their homes and thirty percent have the mortgage paid off.

It is shocking that only 30 percent of those seniors have managed to pay off their mortgages during some of the most affluent decades in America.

A lot of people in that age group have been moving up from their starter house and now live in their dream house bought when they were in their fifties. Others have used their houses as ATMs and spent the money foolishly. On average home owners have about fifty percent equity at present which is lower then it was twenty years ago.

Yes, from the past on down to the present ownership has resided in the hands of very few. As has power and wealth. That is not a coincidence.

onlooker wrote:Yes, from the past on down to the present ownership has resided in the hands of very few. As has power and wealth. That is not a coincidence.

T. Jefferson's America was a huge departure from the European norm of all land in the hands of the nobles and all commoners or peasants paying rent if not being the property of the nobles themselves. It was such a success that the Europeans gradually moved towards it. That we moved from owning small subsistence farms to small suburban houses on small lots was a product of the industrial revolution. I doubt the educated middle class will give up home ownership without a fight.

I doubt the educated middle class will give up home ownership without a fight.--
Well as noted above only 30% truly own their houses. And as for fight cmon, most are too old, too sick or too tired to put up any resistance other than maybe kicking their TV or computer

onlooker wrote:I doubt the educated middle class will give up home ownership without a fight.--
Well as noted above only 30% truly own their houses. And as for fight cmon, most are too old, too sick or too tired to put up any resistance other than maybe kicking their TV or computer

Totally not the case with my family. I'm paid off and all of the kids are in a strong professional employment and net worth position for their age.

Ibon wrote:

vtsnowedin wrote: Currently in the USA 75 percent of married couples age 60 to 65 own their homes and thirty percent have the mortgage paid off.

It is shocking that only 30 percent of those seniors have managed to pay off their mortgages during some of the most affluent decades in America.

Consider 50 percent of those folks have been through a divorce, many of them more than once. Having been through a divorce I can say they are excellent for destroying your accumulated wealth and making you start over in your thirties/fourties/fifties as if you were a new adult starting fresh.

Subjectivist wrote:Consider 50 percent of those folks have been through a divorce, many of them more than once. Having been through a divorce I can say they are excellent for destroying your accumulated wealth and making you start over in your thirties/fourties/fifties as if you were a new adult starting fresh.

Excellent point. I once had a coworker tell me he had been divorced three times. The first time cost him $150K, the second $60K and the third just $10,000 not realizing that each one had cost him two thirds of all he had.

onlooker wrote:https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2017/06/10/the-shocking-doomsday-maps-of-the-world-and-the-billionaire-escape-plans/#276bc0f84047

Well, Forbes won't let me see content because I have an ad blocker.

And I refuse to white list their site and the reason I have an ad blocker because sites like theirs have so much badly behaving nonsense on their site that it makes the site a poorly performing, unreliable, annoying place to browse.

Considering their general content, it's not like I'm missing much, IMO.
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Note: I'd prefer to return to the days where most internet site providers behaved well enough that I hadn't resorted to using an ad blocker due to how annoying/unreasonable so many of the mainstream sites have become. Somehow, I suspect the odds are strongly against that.

Off topic but Outcast, I agree 100%. At least we agree on something haha

We Aden both in our second marriage. Started over again from zilch, except experience and confidence and cussedness, in our late 30's. Mortgage will be paid off in November. We bought a big house, divided into 4 apartments. The first few years were killer but I carried the mortgage. Eventually got to where the house would pay the mortgage. Instead of retiring early I started to take extended vacations and then work part time.

The Wife will turn 65 in October. That will dump the ACA $800/mo payment down to Medicare $110-$130/ mo. With the mortgage gone we will then have that available. That will off set her quitting work in December.

We are not rich and we are living in our doomstead quite nicely.