> Any gain in value cannot easily be realized since it’s not a liquid asset.

Reverse mortgage

"Oh no, someone's given me an extra $500k for doing nothing which I'll get when I (or my kids) sell my house, how terrible"

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jonhohle 3 hours ago | parent [-]

But they didn’t do nothing. They put up capital for a resource. Generally more capital than anything else until late in career.

	▲	iso1631 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They did not create the resource (the land), nor did the person they bought it from.
	▲	dghlsakjg an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		And arguably, they already extracted the value of that house by having a place to live without having paid for it up front. They didn’t even put up the capital in most cases. In the US they will have been granted a loan that is backstopped, and therefore subsidized by the government. Don’t forget the mortgage interest deduction, that’s a massive homeowner subsidy. So someone else put up the capital, the government made that capital cheap, and societal demand with artificial scarcity (in most places) pushed up the asset value. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but let’s not pretend that making capital gains on a house in the US is anything like any other available investment.

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collinmcnulty 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly. Surely the finance industry can come up with a product that automates this so you automatically sell them a tiny slice of your home to make up the property taxes without it affecting your cash flows.

	▲	dghlsakjg an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The private finance industry need not be involved. Just have government allow taxes to be deferred until time of sale with interest pinned to the cost of borrowing for government. That already exists where I live for people over the age of 65. The government can still get the revenue for free via borrowing and the payback is more or less guaranteed.