https://www.businessinsider.com/american-couple-buys-italy-apartment-instead-of-us-down-payment-2025-7
I actually started looking to buy in DC back in 2014, and I thought the pricing was crazy. It’s only gone up exponentially since then.
I just could never wrap my head around owning a million-dollar one-bedroom or two-bedroom condo. Why would you want to do that? It just means you’re going to have to continue working forever until it’s paid off.
most places in canada don’t have real estate that rise by 4-15% each year like in hot markets like vancouver in the BeforeTimes. for some people in some years, their home appreciates more than the income they made as a human being working a job.
it’s the rising land value from a high-demand location. we know this because mobile homes are subject to entropy and depreciate annually, as would any physical structure. even a house.
many people maybe can “pay off” a house then have no housing costs beyond taxes and upkeep, etc. but if you don’t ever pay off your mortgage, you’re a failure, even if your home grows in value by 20-300% over the time you own it. and really, why pay off a home when its growth is higher than the mortgage? and why beat yourself up because you never get to have a “burn the mortgage papers” party.
but since so many people can’t even get into the housing market, our high-demand areas have added systemic anxiety.
if you own a home in such places, the idea of ever paying it off may seem idiotic.
instead we have learned to get a down payment [way too often from a wealthy relative dying [“wealthy” includes people who bought real estate decades ago for less than $100k and sold it for millions more recently]], then we pay down the mortgage to build equity, never burn the mortgage, sell the place, maybe see an appreciation in the land–or not, then take the equity and buy something different/smaller/bigger/whatever, depending on the stage of life we’re in.
but a massive number of people can’t ever get on this treadmill.
north america is scam. a “buy real estate with no money down” infomercial of grifters and “presidents.”
i love reading stories of americans emigrating to other countries and never paying off their rapacious student loans. education should be free, not just k12, luckily many european countries have figured this out. north america? barf.
@usa.mom.in.germany is also a treat to watch. plus, socialism!
and the clip at the top?
mairikkka and canada [to a lesser degree] are increasingly fascist, imperial, colonial and neoliberal. these are not new things here, as we’ve been such things for a long time; now it’s just accelerating.
sooooo many countries approach life differently, and people should consider leaving, as these 2 north american countries slide further into slime.
