I don’t know. The effect of many families with young children all going and buying a house at roughly the same time is absolutely a thing. My street was filled with children when I was young (newly built neighborhood), and the same thing is true again now that I’ve bought a house. The street is filled with parents and children at roughly the same place in life. It’s nice when the only thing you need to do to find playmates is make noise in the street.

Much of this is location dependent. I’ve rented (and owned) in neighborhoods with really strong communities where everybody knew each other; and I’ve rented in neighborhoods where no one knew each other and people got suspicious if you tried to talk to them.

100% this - it is exception, small exception that communities can be formed with neighbours. take home-owners associations into the equation and there is higher likelyhood you’ll punch someone than have a beer with them

Having kids (and being in a neighborhood with kids) also helps a lot.

My building has a building association and we have meetings and also group events. When we were robbed our neighbours were there to help us. I definitely feel part of my community in my building. I think partly it is Dutch culture. I didn’t feel welcome at all by my neighbours in Norway in any of the neighbourhoods I lived in. I don’t think it’s just a personality thing.

This was also our experience while owning three homes in single-family neighborhoods over a 35-year period. We knew our neighbors enough to say "hello", but that was it, and we never associated with them. However, 13 years ago we bought an apartment in a large high-rise condominium building. To our surprise - because that was not a consideration when we moved - we have made many good friends among our neighbors. We go out to dinner together, we invite each other to our homes and to family celebrations. The downside is an aspect of communal living. For example, we needed a new carpet in the building's lobby, so all the owners voted on the color. The majority chose green and we hate green, but we have to live with it.

Counterpoint in Seattle - We talk to our neighbors regularly and are good friends with a few. Having kids helps.

yes, because he forgot about the car. The reason we don’t befriend our neighbors is because as soon as we leave our home, we put ourselves in a metal cage, ensuring no one will talk to us if we don’t want them to.

Befriending your neighbors kind of works in a city but only REALLY works in Amish communities.

Disagree that it's wishful thinking. Making friends with your neighbors requires a commitment to community - it has less to do with being a social person and more to do with recognizing the mutual benefits.

Homes are not low-risk or stable at all - you transfer the risk to your job.

If you lose your employment and you have a home, that's a much riskier situation than if you're renting. Because, if you cant find a job in time or in a very small location radius, you must sell.

The mobility of renting lowers the risk associated with extraordinary life events which requires relocation.

Values stability.

You crave an addictive substance. By choosing the word “crave”, it sounds like you are pathologizing the choice to buy a home, perhaps from a need to validate your personal life choice to rent in spite of facing a forced vacation of your residence. Or perhaps you have financial interests in real estate companies that manage apartments.

If you're renting, getting the landlord to deal with an acute issue is pretty clear cut. They usually get it done. It's the slow burn neglect shit that's almost impossible to get fixed.

Anecdote of my own: The last place we rented before buying had a minor roof leak. Minor, but still a roof leak. The landlord was old, her daughter was responsible for a lot of stuff, and they were both remote for at least part of the year. It took 3 years for them to finally get the roof replaced, evidently about a year after we left.

And these were good landlords. They took care of a bunch of minor disasters in good time: dishwasher, washing machine, thermostats for the baseboard electric heat, stack vent got clobbered by ice coming off the roof? All dealt with promptly. But the roof, important though it was, wasn't a big enough problem to merit quick attention. The place was a log home, and by appearances, hadn't been subjected to any kind of refinishing for a good while too.

In our condominium building (42 floors) the rule is that every apartment owner is responsible for any damages to their apartment, even if they are caused by an apartment in an upper floor. This is because otherwise the owners of the upper floors would have to have million-dollar insurance premiums to cover the possibility of a leak in their apartment causing damages to multiple floors below. We had an event where a burst pipe in the 28th floor caused damages all the way down to the 8th floor.

Buying a condo is half buying and half renting.

Because it's an easy "hot take" to post for people hungry to change their lives?

Arguing the actual optimal approach would require crunching numbers, which would take time by authors and readers, ergo the surfeit of "Here's why you crunching the numbers doesn't matter" popular content.

Also, just to call out one of the many gaps in this particular post: buying a home is a double hedge against inflation.

Given that (1) your debt is denominated in buy-date currency, while your real property value will be inflation-adjusted & (2) in the US at least, buying a home is the easiest way to borrow to invest with, given low mortgage rates (compared to other loans) + <100% down + fixed-rate 30 year mortgages with refinance at buyer's discretion.

> once you have children, owning your home is a very welcome level of stability

I think this is the biggest factor if it applies. If we want to be utilitarian about it, the benefit to your kids of having the same school to attend, same neighbors to play with, same room to call their own and paint the walls as they desire, etc. just dwarfs everything else. Kids just do well in stable, predictable home environments.

I know three families that owned and had to move cause they could not afford to live in the house they own (gerrimandering- related…)

owning does not shield you from shit like that, maybe in rural america but definitely not in/around the cities