I have previously (here, here and here) talked about my aversion to the concept of mortgage debt (Old French “death pledge”). I was sort of grasping at the reasons behind it, the justifications for co-owning a home with a bank just rang hollow to me.
Now the folks at eFinanceDirectory have addressed most of these myths head-on from an economics standpoint, and found much as I did intuitively, that buying a house is never, ever, a wise investment. Most interesting is the investigation of the real return on housing. Funniest is the link to Mortgage Lenders at the bottom of the article.
Perhaps as people realize now that house values can go down just as easily as up, we can get back to talking about homes as what they are, shelter, and stop spewing misinformation about what they are not, investments.
Tags: debt, economics, housing, mortgage
These are the ramblings of 
The overwhelming majority of people who purchase a house should never consider it as an investment. There’s far better ways to make money. It is shelter and people should acquire the shelter that they can afford to live in. Way too many people bought homes in the past few years that had no business doing so. They couldn’t afford it and the lenders couldn’t afford to loan the money. There are some who uses real estate as an investment… but it shouldn’t be on their residence.