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0 pointsonlyrealcuzzo3y ago0 comments

You're forgetting a.2) the "wealthy" people usually have high incomes, and the x10 houses are usually in high tax states, and housing is a huge tax break.

~20% or my housing "cost" is paid for by a tax break for owning a house. Another ~20% is principal.

When you also factor in that the Fed guarantees to devalue money at AT LEAST ~3% per year, and you have 5x leverage (or more) - that's another ~15% effectively subsidized by the government.

So when you have sufficient cash flow - it's easy to look at your housing "cost" as only ~40% of the actual payment.

Compared to rents, this is a steal.

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cactus20933y ago

With the SALT cap at $10k and the mortgage interest deduction cap limited to $750k property value, the ultra-wealthy are not really benefitting from this as much as you are saying.

Someone with a $750-$1M home is getting roughly the maximum tax break available, and someone with a $5M home is paying for everything above that first $1M themselves* without any extra tax incentives.

*Except in California due to prop 13 many of them are paying a tiny fraction of the property tax they should be paying, but that's a separate issue.

onlyrealcuzzoOP3y ago

Most "wealthy" people, by definition, are not "ultra wealthy". That's where the majority of the wealth is - but there's far better schemes to avoid taxes for that group.

Home buyers buying these x10 houses are pretty much limited to the top 10% in income - the vast majority of them are not ultra wealthy.

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