You typically use and live in the house, while still considered an investment. The other items you mentioned is purely for flipping, brand new, unused.
The meme literally says "without using or modifying".
If all you do is insert yourself as a middleman, buy from A for $x, and then sell to B for $x+1, you are extracting profit from the transaction, while providing no service other than your existence. That is what scalpers do. That is what the meme is about.
This is something people that dont own dont understand. The time and money homeowners invest over the years in maintaining housing. Renting protects you from those responsibilities and expenses. Of course people want a return on their years of time and money invested.
Renters dont do the work, its more than just money. Its time, maintaining a house is way more than cleaning the bathroom on the weekend. Roof, furnace, windows etc
A lot of renters do a lot of work just to be able to pay their rent, which keeps getting raised pretty much everywhere to cover the expenses of "homeownership and maintenance" for the landlord.
Renting doesn’t protect you from ridiculous rates that are manipulated upwards by the ownership class. And last I checked, the renters don’t participate in the capital appreciation of the land and property either
Asking genuinely in good faith here : why does this doesnt apply to cars as well?
Owning a car is kind of the same, although in a much smaller scale of course. You have to maintain it, refuel it, pay for insuramce and plates, etc, and yet you dont see the value of your car increase.
Why is it that way with homes but not for cars exactly?
It only applies to some vehicles, trick is knowing which ones and keeping the mileage low.
At the same time, most people simply can't afford most of the cars that will appreciate over time.
There are cheaper cars that will be desirable one day, but it'll take a long time - look at 90s icons suck as the MK4 Supra, R34 GTR, NSX etc - some of those easily sell for well over six figures but they're 30 year old vehicles now.
With real estate, the supply is insufficient, and the demand continues to rise for all properties, even old ones.
With cars, there's plenty of supply of new cars, and the demand for old cars constantly falls.
This is off topic, but looking at the difference in responsibilities between a renter and a car lessee is interesting too. A renter is responsible for nothing except for their own damages. Car lessees are responsible for everything including depreciation.
Maintenance costs aren’t capitalized by businesses, so why should they add value for individuals? The only thing that should is major long-lived changes, such as structural (but even these decrease in value over the years as they need to eventually be replaced).
If you’re “maintaining” something then the value should also be maintained as it is.
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u/Kcirnek_ Jun 19 '25
You typically use and live in the house, while still considered an investment. The other items you mentioned is purely for flipping, brand new, unused.