re: #454 lawhawk

Renting does make quite a bit of sense for many people rather than buying - not only does it allow for better mobility and ease of transition from one job to the next (don’t have to be tied to a given location should economic conditions in a location founder), but the costs could be significantly less renting versus owning.

There seems to be a growing movement to end the mortgage deduction for interest on the federal tax returns, which would increase revenues and eliminate a distortion of the real estate markets (which is why the real estate market will try and fight it particularly when the market is still a mess and recovering from the meltdown may take still more years in some areas - think Vegas and Florida).

Real estate is an investment that carries risk - and efforts to mitigate that risk have distorted the market even further.

True. But the idea used to be to buy a home while you’re young and then you have a nest for when you retire. Once you get into renting you’ll have to keep on renting during retirement and on a very fixed income for most. If in the case you have to buy a modest home in NJ and pay 7500 in property taxes then you’ll limit who can buy those homes. This is not considering the grossly inflated (and they’re still inflated) prices of a home.