COVER STORY :
Rethinking Homeownership: Why owning a home may no longer make economic sense.
Posted on 09/13/2010 11:18:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The stock market may be dragging, but home prices are soaring, fueling a national obsession with real estate. Your house is now your piggy bank.
—“Home Sweet Home,” Time Magazine, June 2005
Buying a house is supposed to make us better citizens, better investors and better off. But that American Dream may well be a fantasy.
—“The Case Against Homeownership,” Time Magazine, September 2010
Longtime readers of NotMakingThisUp know exactly where we’re going with this—or at least the general direction.
But before we get there, let’s recap the story so far.
All human beings—and especially those creatures residing on Wall Street—operate on the basis of pattern recognition.
Pattern recognition can be employed in the form of using a computer to analyze second-by-second trading patterns in whatever one happens to trade, looking for profitable ways to buy and sell; or it can be just sitting in a meeting listening to a CEO talk, keeping an ear out for things that remind you of similar, past investment ideas that worked or didn’t work.
And one of the things that Wall Street types pay attention to when they look for patterns is something called “Cover Story Syndrome,” which is a shorthand way of saying that when investment themes get so popular they appear on the cover of a major news magazine—a dying breed, but the basic idea is still there—then that investment theme is, by definition, too popular to succeed, and maybe popular enough to start betting against.
It is a pattern that occurs more often than you might think.
The Cover Story of all Cover Stories, as any investor with grey hair will tell you, is the fabled “Death of Equities” BusinessWeek cover story from August 13, 1979 (“How inflation is destroying the stock market”),
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Buying a copy of Time no longer makes economic sense
Hope and change.
Obama’s America.
Time is a contra-indicator. What this cover says to me, is that if you have the means, now is the PERFECT time to buy a home. There are huge bargains out there. I wish I had the money now to buy a place in Vegas.
Ya, living in crime ridden, bed bug infested apartment complexes full of illegals is the way to go ...
What a load of BS !!!
Better that we all live in High-rise, Government-provided housing, so it is easier for the government to “provide services” to you, and lower your footprint on the environment!!
HAIL CHANGE, Soviet-Style!
The author uses the concept of pattern recognition to observe that one of the things that Wall Street types pay attention to when they look for patterns is something called “Cover Story Syndrome,” which is a shorthand way of saying that when investment themes get so popular they appear on the cover of a major news magazine—a dying breed, but the basic idea is still there—then that investment theme is, by definition, too popular to succeed, and maybe popular enough to start betting against.
It is a pattern that occurs more often than you might think.
For instance, in June 2005, the peak of the Housing Bubble: Time Magazine publishes a front-cover story on the joys—at least, investment-wise—of owning your own home.
What happened a few years later was one of the greatest housing busts in history.
Well, five years later, they’re at it again: the editors of Time have given us another Cover Story—this one being possibly the gloomiest assessment of the worth of owning a home ever to hit the press.
Could this mean that we are seeing the beginnings of a housing recovery?
But of course. Communists (like those at Time) despise personal home ownership.
Dang, man. I just wanted to find out if you are from Wisconsin ("Ya"). And, I think what you posted was funny....
Ya, living in crime ridden, bed bug infested apartment complexes full of illegals is the way to go ...
It makes sense Time would say this, being the communist mag it is. Commies hate property ownership (well, except for the party bosses) and so advising against homeownership is right up the commie alley.
I can think of another alley of which Time should go up....
Yes, its opposite day.
Whatever they say , do the opposite. Time to beat up somebody and buy your retirement home.
Could now be the bottom ? Hmmmm...
Actually the cover date on the magazine was June 13 2005 which means it was on the stands about a week before. I don’t know if that guy is just off a month or what.
Right now, and for the at least the last decade or so, home ownership has been a bust financially.
But that doesn’t mean it will always be so.
Besides, they atribute all amnner of social migration to “home ownership” per-se, and I don’t think that’s valid.
A lot of people want out of the cities -particularly if they’re raising a family.
Translation: “We want to convince you, the great unwashed, to live in cramped cities while we, your betters, live in country estates. Frankly we just don’t want your kind anywhere near us.”
"They" had one of two things...luck, or help.
The socialist government wants to build you a home. A nice drab apartment attached to hundreds of others. they will allow you to live there— in fact they will insist you live there.
This is no surprise. In the old communist world, hardly anyone owned their own home. People lived in sterile, crappy, apartments built by the regime. It’s what TIME wants for this country. They’re looking forward to it, and so is Obama.
But, but, but ... I thought home ownership was a right? /s
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