Morgan Housel

And it's a choice.

It's cynical to say that people want unaffordable housing.

It is a choice to not build as much as we need.

But I think that is flawed thinking too.

I'll tell you why.

Let's say, just keep the number simple.

You buy a house for a hundred thousand.

Let's say 1 million, make it more reasonable.

You buy a house for a million bucks and the price doubles.

Great.

In your mind, you're like, I just made a million dollars.

But no, because if you sell that house for 2 million, you need to buy another house to live in.

And the next house you're going to buy, the price also doubled in the last two years.

And so it's this fandom kind of thing where it's like the equity that you build isn't really wealth.

Because when you sell that house, you probably have to buy another one that went up in value just as much.

And unless you are moving to a cheaper city, which of course that happens, you're not getting any benefit out of that.

My wife and I experienced this in where we live in the last year.

The house that we lived in,

previously doubled in four years, which is not like shouldn't happen, but it did.

The house doubled, we lived in, and then we sold it about a year ago, bought a new house.