Here’s a thought experiment: if I told you the market was going to be less liquid and you may not be able to easily sell the house you’re about to buy, wouldn’t that change your behavior?
I think you’ve bought into the tik tok narrative that somehow it’s zillows fault that houses are expensive.
I'm buying housing for myself. It would be a potential relevant thing to take into account between choices, but I still need a house.
I'm buying a long term asset, so the liquidity of the housing market is not relevant to me, unless I'm actually buying for a specific short term, like a planned work period.
Liquidity of the housing market is only important to the agents and the loan originators because they make money on the flow.
> if I told you the market was going to be less liquid and you may not be able to easily sell the house you’re about to buy, wouldn’t that change your behavior?
No. Like a normal person, I bought my house to live in and to improve and to stay in for a long period of time. It isn't a speculative investment vehicle.
It seems like you’re presenting a straw man. Being able to sell your house and not be tied to one home for life is a reasonable desire that has nothing to do with speculative investment.
No, it's that if I need to sell it I've structured my finances and my life to be able to take time to do it--because I've intentionally made decisions with the remodeling in my home to be suboptimal for selling anyway. I'd have to put up a wall and reroute a bunch of plumbing for my laundry room off my master bedroom so I could turn it back into a bedroom because that's what the dollar-signs-for-eyes crew values, so why would I be worried about selling it in 48 hours?
This is an industry I actually know a teensy bit about. Normal people don't need to sell a house in two weeks. That is an abnormal condition brought on by stupid, disinterested money flooding the market and the idea that everyone must be hyper-mobile all the time is one brought on by the more deranged, "humans exclusively acting as work producing automatons" part of a market economy. Solidity and permanence are valuable. I'd go so far as to say that when you take into account the benefits of long-term residence and ownership--and they are benefits you will not see in your ML model, such as a cohesive neighborhood where you actually know and maybe even interact with the people who live around you--that it might even be a positive to discourage market thrash. You know. For humans, and not investors.
> structured my finances and my life to be able to take time to do it
so you do agree that it takes time to buy and sell real estate. The reason liquidity is better for market efficiency is that liquidity allows the price of the asset to move towards the "true" price, where either party of the transaction doesn't feel they've been cheated.
If you claim that house flippers are "cheating" the long term buyers, then you must also agree that the market is currently inefficient, and that the long term buyers is paying above the "true" price. Liquidity would actually alleviate that problem!
if you don't agree that flippers are cheating their price higher, then you must also agree that the long term buyers are getting a better deal.
So either way, liquidity makes the market more efficient, and results in the "true" price of the asset to be revealed sooner and easier.
It’s clear your approach to housing is consistent with your life choices. I think maybe you are just thinking your approach is “normal” and the right way to do things.
A lot of people buy starter homes, or homes in areas they do not plan to stay 10+ years, or homes they outgrow. That’s all normal too.
> if I told you the market was going to be less liquid and you may not be able to easily sell the house you’re about to buy, wouldn’t that change your behavior?
It would not change my physiological need for shelter, no
“Oh I might not be able to sell this for a profit in two years, guess I’ll die in the street”
I think you’ve bought into the tik tok narrative that somehow it’s zillows fault that houses are expensive.