The American Myth About Home Ownership

(click on photo for a bird's eye view)

Be A Man, Buy a House?

I came across an interesting Forbes piece on the Internet this morning. The title of it was "Don't Buy That House".

Among the amusing items I found was this gem from the cheerleading NAR of the time (the 1920s) . . . which makes David Lereah's recent pep rally soundbites seem a bit, well, tame.

Homeownership has been touted as civic responsibility, "moral muscle" and a bulwark against communism. A 1922 pamphlet from the National Association of Real Estate Boards even promised that it would put the "MAN back in MANHOOD." Over the years, it has been claimed that homeowners vote more, join more voluntary associations, take better care of their residences and have better-educated kids.

That one made me laugh out loud.

Back in the 20s, there was no Viagara. But there were cigars and homes to buy to make a man feel more "manly." Whoever was in charge of the NAR at the time didn't use a legendary spinmeister economist such as David Lereah. Instead, he (women had no positions of authority in those days) had a copywriter who knew how to sell without a bunch of numbers involved. And the two of them probably smoked big cigars over every line of copy just to make sure they hit that one emotion which really sells: fear.

Go for the penis instead of the throat. Go for flag waving patriotism in your copy. To buy a home is the American thing to do. To rent is to possibly show your neighbors (and women) that you are a limp dicked Communist.

What bullshit! But it is brilliant copy, it really is. It hammers at the fears of men with low self-esteem with an insight Sigmund Freud must have admired. That copy sold a load of homes in the 20s. (And if you know how the run up in Real Estate during the Housing Bubble of the 1920s added to the good feel of "The Roaring 20s", you would also know that Real Estate crashed in Florida in 1928 . . . one year ahead of the biggest stock market crash of all time.)

While the nascent NAR was urging men to become more American and manly by buying a home . . . they got help from the lenders: the Roaring 20s was the decade where EZ Credit was established. People financed washers, RCA radios, cars and more for the first time.

And here's another fact about American brainwash in the 1920s which was never a myth . . . The Roaring 20s indelibly stamped on frontal lobes of American consumers that one question which still prevails today: "How much is the monthly payment?"

For Roaring 20s homes, a special new product was invented for men with bigger ambitions of Manhood: the Adjustable Rate Mortgage. EZ Credit was the Viagara and Cialisis of the Roaring 20s. So much for having a nation of big swinging dicks owning homes, farms and stocks which they soon lost to foreclosures, bankruptcies and margin calls.

I'm going to give Forbes some props for bringing up the following factoids at the end of their article:

What about all the social benefits attributed to homeownership? It turns out that many of the supposed benefits of ownership are likely due simply to family stability, for which homeownership is an excellent proxy.

For instance, while it is true that the children of homeowners have scored better on standardized tests than the children of renters, there's little to suggest that ownership per se is the cause of better performance.

"Some research has suggested that it isn't whether parents own or rent, but the mobility of the household," says Rachel Drew, a research analyst at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. In other words, it's likely that families who stay in one place for a long time (renting or buying) are doing better by their kids than families that move often.

"All of these things we say are benefits of homeownership in the U.S. I think would also be benefits of long-term rental tenancy," says Bourassa.

Certainly there are plenty of stable, wealthy, well-educated places in Europe, at least, where homeownership is far rarer than it is in the U.S. Nearly 70% of all Americans own their own homes; only 34% of the Swiss do. Thriving cities like Hamburg, Amsterdam and Berlin have rates of ownership of just 20%, 16% and 11% respectively, according to the United Nations.

So if something in your gut--or on your bank statement--tells you that now is not the right time to buy, resist the pressure. There may be no place like home, but there's no reason you can't rent it.

I can buy that. A feeling of "rootlessness" is not good for any kid who is bounced from school to school on a regular basis. And which child would grow up with fewer problems: a kid living in an apartment or home rental where the parents are not in debt and are putting away money to further the education of the child? Or a child stuck in the suburbs in a home where ma and pa are now working two jobs to keep the exploding ARM paid and the sheriff from nailing a Foreclosure notice to the door?

Screw the NAR: I'm Comfortable With My Manhood . . . And I Rent

As an adult with no children, I am not locked into staying in just one rental for the sake of my kids either. (Not that I think moving from one rental to another in the same town would be detrimental to children's health as long as they had the same schools and friends to keep.)

And today, renting makes more economical sense than buying a home. Read the whole Forbes article to get a sense of what they are explaining in common sense terms or read my blog where I said the same thing in much lengthier words.

To which I will add: I'd rather save a ton of money by renting. I'd rather take those savings from renting and re-invest them in safe dividend paying stocks, with gold, silver and oil as hedges. And if things ever get tight, I can always find a cheaper rental to live in without destroying my credit.

Furthermore, I will not be renting a house a hundred miles from my workplace.

It may sound un-American, but I'd much rather live in a old Berlin house rental or upper floor Seattle or Prague warehouse apartment rental than live in an American suburb where there is no culture . . . other than that which I can find on my TV . . . and where I struggle to meet the exploding payments on my ARM.

Screw the American Mondo Condo Shopping Mall Hell

Americans put down European living all the time. Usually, these very critics have too often never traveled outside our borders.

I once rented an apartment in downtown Frankfurt, Germany for three years and I cherish those memories of living in early 70s Deutschland. I saw The Who, Led Zepellin, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, name a great band of the era, just steps from my apartment's door. I owned a Norton 750 Commando Motorcycle which took me to Heidelberg, Munich, Berlin and to countries like Scotland, France, Denmark, etc. I was immersed in culture.

More often than not, I'd buy a monthy "Eurail" pass which allowed me to hop on any train going anywhere. Sometimes, I and a couple of friends would get drunk in a good downtown bar at the beginning of our 3 or 5 day pass, go to the Hauptbahnhof, and simply jump on the first train leaving to see where it would take us. It was magic. Wake up stone sober in say Dusseldorf and run around that city for the day. Or find out you are in Switzerland at the border as your passport is checked.

Forbes mentions Berlin.

I pulled guard duty once in Berlin. That city was the swingingest city in Europe at the time, more so than London or Paris, IMO. And this was a city which was surrounded by Russian troops. Yet the people in West Berlin lived like there was no tomorrow.

The very best symphony I ever heard in my life was in West Berlin, 1971. That's where I heard Dvorak's "From the New World" symphony. To this day, I hold that piece of music as my favorite classical music work because it takes me back to West Berlin.

The Forbes article states that only 11% of my beloved Berlin's current population owns their home. Who cares? Berlin is alive and jumping. Berlin is the city I think of as the new "Capital" of Europe. If I moved there, I would be able to walk or catch a Strassenbahn (electric streetcar) to the incredible art galleries, stores, concert halls, beer halls, coffee shops, and outdoor political rallies and festivals (like Oktoberfest, Fascing (sp?) and the world's biggest Dance Music festival) which make the City fun, young and vibrant. I could spend years just losing myself in lengthy walks of its streets to stop and view inspiring architecture.

On the other hand, one of my visions of hell (I am an atheist, so I am speaking of hell from a contextural view) would be for me to be "stuck" in a $500,000 American suburb or exburb house (which cost me $550,000 a few years ago) and where the closest culture center is the indoor mega-mall.

That mega mall would have maybe one or two outdoor cafes where you could buy a watered down beer and which overlook a 50 acre parking lots. Or maybe you would overlook the nearby Interstate. The closest thing to an art gallery would be the Crafts Connection Poster and Frame Store. My only connection to music would be the salesmen at Sam Ash playing the same metal riff over and over. The only coffee shop would be a Starbucks. And the closest cinema would be the indoor multiplex showing "Diehard 12", "Star Wars 15", "Home Alone 4", and "Scary Movie 7".

When I think of Mega Malls in the burbs, I think of Mojo Nixon's 80s Anthem, "Burn Down the Malls".

America has been so dumbed down that we believe it's a dream to "own" a house miles away from where we work. We are constantly brainwashed to become a good little homeowner miles from nowhere in a development which has no soul.

The NAR's current campaign, "Now is a great time to buy a home," is nothing more than big cigar smoking men . . . and women . . . with vested interests in the Real Estate Cartel patting your head, whispering, "Now be a good little consumer and buy a home." Pat, pat, pat. "Credit is tightening up, but you can use your credit cards for a downpayment." Pat, pat, pat. "And don't pay no never mind to the ARM which kicks in a few years from now. By then rates should be lower, and as you know, home prices always go up." Pat, pat, pat.

The NAR doesn't care a bit about how indebted we might become in our chase of the "American Dream". Their job is to sell homes so they can line their pockets with your hard earned cash. So they lull you to sleepwalk into buying a home which you really cannot afford . . . unless you become their girly man or dumb blonde who never questions their authority.

Note to the NAR flacks: more and more Americans are waking up to the fact of a newer reality - their home owns them.

The more Americans admit their recent home purchase is the biggest mistake of their lives, the more people are adding to the misery index. It's not the naysayers on overpriced housing who are un-American. It's the Real Estate Cartel pushing Liars Loans, overpriced homes, and developments with no longterm planning who are undermining America.

People don't really relish the thought of a one or two hour commute to and from cookie cutter homes. But the NAR doesn't discuss this in thir adverts or billboard ads. People move way the hell out into nowhere because they fear not being able to afford the American Dream which keeps moving further out and farther away.

"Where do you live?"

"Over the mountain pass in that new sub-division which is cheaper than housing near here."

Who wants to live where no one knows your name, where neighbors don't know neighbors . . . unless they are reporting you for breaking Homeowner Association rules such as flying a flag from your lawn, parking a pickup truck in the driveway, or seeing your kids ride bicycles without crash helmets on?

Screw that Home Owners Association Hell

Give me a rental in a garret of an home built in the 1700s in the great city of Berlin which is an accessible, inspiring, cosmopolitan and freethinking vibrant city and society. Or let me find another spacious Key West rental which allows me to almost never need a car as I walk to work and bicycle around town. My neighbors in either locale do not and would not think the less of me for actually, heaven's forbid, renting a place.

Today, we still have Americans biting on "Now is a great time to buy a Home. " But deeply ingrained in that thinking is the American myth that home ownership is a right, that it is a dream to chase at any cost, that it really is a measure of your worth . . . male or female.

Screw Hours of Commuting to and from Work

To the NAR I say you can keep your two to four hours of daily satellite radio listening in your car added to an eight hour day on the job just so you can afford that overpriced, ball and chain, sleep/eat cocoon in the suburbs or exburbs.

No question about it NAR, NHA, and Lenders, you can keep your home in "Misty Meadows - Putting the Magic Back into Homeowning" (as the billboards on the highway describe that place to which you hope to sell me into indentured slavery).

So I sign off with an old adage to members of the Real Estate Cartel: you can fool some of the people some of the time, you can't fool all the people all of the time.

I got my manhood right here. Shake, shake. And my money spent on rent saves cents.

Thankuvurymuch,

DJ Rock has left the building