Homeowners Refuse to Accept the Awkward Truth: They’re Rich - Owners of the multi-million-dollar properties still see themselves as middle class, a warped self-image that has a big impact on renters
Yes and no. Wealth can be used as a proxy, usually via debt, to acquire more wealth. If this wasn't the case, Elon Musk would not have been able to buy Twitter.
This is why renters are absolutely screwed: not only are they spending the same as someone with a mortgage in many cases, but they can't leverage equity at all. Need a car repair done? Send a kid to school? Retire? Invest? If you rent, you're screwed.
Many (many!) have leveraged their equity into buying more houses to rent out for income, and/or into all sorts of HELOC-related silliness.
I don't think peolle realize how stark the divide is between people with homes and people without, especially for anyone who bought before 2020. We've created, almost overnight, a massive and likely permanent underclass, and we have no intention of putting the kinds of supports in place to deal with the problems that will create over the next few decades as renters are broken by retirement and AI.
We've substituted paying fair wages and having real retirement plans with house value, and now we're on the verge of slamming the door on a huge portion of our society by locking them out of home equity at the same time we're diluting their earnings.
Yes, Musk et al are an extreme example, but the equity gap is real.
Sort of. You can do a one-time conversion to income if you want, and income can of course be diverted towards very slowly building up wealth, but yeah they're not the same thing.
That's my point. Owning a home doesn't make anyone rich. Owning multiple homes which generate income is a different thing, but people here assume is that if you bough a house in London 20 years ago for pennies, then today you are a fucking Bezos swimming in money. That's not the case.