> We're being a bit sloppy about whether we're comparing rent to buy directly or rent+invest to buy.

Both the grand-parent that started this thread and you look to be using the former comparison and I have been consistently using the latter. It makes no sense to compare renting + no investments to owning with lots of money in equity. Obviously the person with money is better off. That was my initial point. 'Renters get screwed' is less fundamentally true than 'people with less money get screwed.' It seems obvious to me that the only debatable situation is the following

(1) How is a sum of money better spent? Buying a house and selling after X years, or buying other investments and selling after X years while renting?

My stance is that renting+investing comes out ahead more often than people think, especially for specific locations, durations, etc. You really should do your own math and figure it out. What is your stance? You seem to convey unrealistic, unqualified positivity towards owning. And don't take me disagreeing with you as me being anti-owning. I just don't think you've been making the good arguments in favor of owning. By far the best argument for owning is that you get access to non-callable 5x leverage. Every other factor can be hand-waved away except that one.

> The overall costs are the same either way, they have to be. To rent is to pay extra to not have to pay a lump sum, not have to fix things, and be able to stop anytime. Renters pay for maintenance and improvements one way or another.

I already pointed out a mistake in this line of reasoning, economies of scale keep rental unit maintenance fees lower.

> Inflation and real-estate prices affect renters and buyers equally in the long run. Renting must cost more than buying, on average. The rent system cannot work unless that's true.

That is a vague pro-point. Here is a vague counter-point: fully-paid-off owners only have upkeep costs. If the bulk of rental units are from fully-paid-off owners rent prices can asymptotically approach those upkeep costs while making money for the owners. And again, these upkeep costs can be lower than owning a single place due to economies of scale.

> That's a suggestive symmetry, but not comparing renting to buying directly, it's assuming an unspecified optional investment only for the renter.

Your definition of 'directly' does not make sense. (1) is 'directly,' where the renter is the potential owner. Obviously the alternative is to invest the money that was not spent on the house. Obviously that money is only available to the renter. Obviously if there are extra money it can be invested similarly in both cases so there is no point talking about it.

> And rent is a known, fixed, high ongoing sunk cost. Buying might not be, considering the future sale. Whether costs are sunk when buying depends on many things. In my case, I put tens of thousands into a house, and it all came back when I sold.

The shape of your argument seems to be that 'renting has high sunk costs but owning has none, so owning is better.' This argument is not logical.

> > It doesn't seem that easy and I think the fact that you don't think they need backing up tips your hand.
>
> Not sure what you mean, but I can see multiple sites saying the underwater mortgage rate is ~10% nationally, and an article about Chicago being highest in the nation at ~15%. So is it fair to say at least 85% of people are not under water? Foreclosure rate was just under 0.5% in the US in 2018. That's the number of people who experienced a total loss of a partially paid mortgage. I stand by my claim for now.

What I meant was that you were being overly optimistic and tried to sway mine (and other readers) opinions about a key debate metric without using any data. You just said "housing returns aren't normally 0." This has a thousand interpretations. Inflation adjusted? Cost adjusted? Over what duration of home ownership? Does this take into account mortgage-leverage? Does it take into account historic mortgage rates that are no longer available? How far back are you looking? How much longer do you think it will last? This is a country-wide metric, how does it apply locally? You know Walt Disney and I have 26 oscars between the two of us, is it 13 each? You stated that number as if it's useful, exactly how useful is it?

Just to pick at your numbers here: seems fair to say at least 85% of people are not underwater. How many people are not underwater because they sold while being underwater? How many people are not underwater, but would be if you take 2-3% yearly inflation into account, thus making their investment below 0 actual growth?

If I have a point at all its that you should express way more uncertainty when speaking about investing in housing.

> I don't think that's true. Today's home sales includes all the people who waited until now, and tomorrow's home sales will include the people who are waiting today. Anyway, I ran with the assumption made by the calculator you linked to, and that most people experience: that you sell your house after some time for a moderate positive return against the purchase price of the house.

I gave you a much more pessimistic yoy growth number than the on you shared. Then I further commented that the real numbers could be even worse. You don't comment on the massive disparity between mine and your housing growth numbers and instead disagree with my hand-waving asterisk...

> Underwater is different than rent, which is always sunk. Underwater might be a total -20% return post sale for some number of people, where rent is always a -100% return for all renters.

You are ignoring the sunk costs of owning and using your funky 'direct compare' definition where the renter has no other investments. Again, bad shape of argument, not necessarily wrong 'feel' of the argument.