Anyone? There are lots of houses worth less than $1,000,000. Sure, by the time a mortgage is paid off and you fully own the house yourself a person should also have some savings, but I certainly wouldn’t expect that to be universal.
My house is now worth a bit over $350,000. And although that is less then $1,000,000 I bought it at $185,000 (and had to use every penny saved to get a down payment) just a decade ago. Even in my small rural town I currently could not afford to buy the house I live in, I doubt this will improve in time.
I might not be a millionaire, but I would guess I am now in a smaller class of people that owns where they sleep. And if the market keeps doing whats its doing I might be a millionaire in time (this is not overall a good thing).
Plus the bank owns any house with a mortgage. It’s not your house until it’s paid off. Can’t be a millionaire with $400,000 in assets and $375,000 in debt.
I am not sure you understand how a mortgage works. Why would I have $375,000 on a mortgage for a house I bought for $185,000 over a decade ago?
The bank “owns” only what is owning on the mortgage with the property and buildings on it as collateral. Even if I stopped paying all together (for some reason) the bank does not want the house, they want the money and will force a sale though foreclosure.
The issue is that we now have two “classes” of non rich people, those that spend money on rent (a cost without equity) and those like me ether old enough or lucky enough to have a mortgage where the money we spend on a mortgage (reducing that debit) is not wasted and the value of our homes keeps going up.
Wasn’t speaking to your specific home value. I was adding to the point that every homeowner is not a millionaire.
If someone has a house worth $350,000 but they’ve only paid off $50,000 from the principal, then they aren’t worth $350,000. I’d argue they’re not even worth $300,000.
Miss a few payments, and they lose the house plus whatever payments they’d already made. That’s not personal wealth. We’re just living in the bank’s house until it’s paid off and the deed gets transferred.
So we’ve got a tiny number of billionaires in charge.
An ever dwindling number of millionaires desperately holding onto their small privilege
I mean this simply cannot be true.
If everyone who owns a house is a millionaire, then in order for the “number of millionaires” to be “ever dwindling” we would need not only a housing shortage, but an eroding quantity of housing or a drastic drop in home ownership rates. Neither is happening. The home ownership rate in 2024 is 65.8% according to this site: https://www.simplyinsurance.com/how-many-homeowners-in-the-us/ which puts us at a much improved rate of ownership from when the housing crash happened in 2008, when we were running somewhere in the low 60s.
So not everyone who owns a house is a millionaire, or millionaires numbers aren’t dwindling. It simply cannot be the case that what you’re saying here is all true.
Anyone who owns a house is a millionaire.
So we’ve got a tiny number of billionaires in charge.
An ever dwindling number of millionaires desperately holding onto their small privilege
An ever growing number of working poor who need two paychecks to live
Sounds like Tsarist Russia, with no single royal family to execute.
Anyone? There are lots of houses worth less than $1,000,000. Sure, by the time a mortgage is paid off and you fully own the house yourself a person should also have some savings, but I certainly wouldn’t expect that to be universal.
My house is now worth a bit over $350,000. And although that is less then $1,000,000 I bought it at $185,000 (and had to use every penny saved to get a down payment) just a decade ago. Even in my small rural town I currently could not afford to buy the house I live in, I doubt this will improve in time.
I might not be a millionaire, but I would guess I am now in a smaller class of people that owns where they sleep. And if the market keeps doing whats its doing I might be a millionaire in time (this is not overall a good thing).
Plus the bank owns any house with a mortgage. It’s not your house until it’s paid off. Can’t be a millionaire with $400,000 in assets and $375,000 in debt.
I am not sure you understand how a mortgage works. Why would I have $375,000 on a mortgage for a house I bought for $185,000 over a decade ago?
The bank “owns” only what is owning on the mortgage with the property and buildings on it as collateral. Even if I stopped paying all together (for some reason) the bank does not want the house, they want the money and will force a sale though foreclosure.
The issue is that we now have two “classes” of non rich people, those that spend money on rent (a cost without equity) and those like me ether old enough or lucky enough to have a mortgage where the money we spend on a mortgage (reducing that debit) is not wasted and the value of our homes keeps going up.
Wasn’t speaking to your specific home value. I was adding to the point that every homeowner is not a millionaire.
If someone has a house worth $350,000 but they’ve only paid off $50,000 from the principal, then they aren’t worth $350,000. I’d argue they’re not even worth $300,000.
Miss a few payments, and they lose the house plus whatever payments they’d already made. That’s not personal wealth. We’re just living in the bank’s house until it’s paid off and the deed gets transferred.
I mean this simply cannot be true.
If everyone who owns a house is a millionaire, then in order for the “number of millionaires” to be “ever dwindling” we would need not only a housing shortage, but an eroding quantity of housing or a drastic drop in home ownership rates. Neither is happening. The home ownership rate in 2024 is 65.8% according to this site: https://www.simplyinsurance.com/how-many-homeowners-in-the-us/ which puts us at a much improved rate of ownership from when the housing crash happened in 2008, when we were running somewhere in the low 60s.
So not everyone who owns a house is a millionaire, or millionaires numbers aren’t dwindling. It simply cannot be the case that what you’re saying here is all true.