I feel bad for the Tampa homeowner who discovered homes in their neighborhood used to be worth seven figures and are now worth low six figures.
I think we all predicted that kind of thing would happen somewhere someday, and Florida is one of those top places on the list, but even so, we should be sympathetic. You never really think this kind of thing is going to happen to you, after all. Best of luck to everyone whose homes were destroyed.
I don’t. They dropped everything and moved across the country to a place with a known problematic housing market then gave the shocked picachu face when they couldn’t get back out. Remember that they dropped $550k cash. They are going to recover.
Someone who can afford a seven figure house is part of the 1% I'm not going to feel sorry about them losing a portion of their wealth that still keeps them above 95% of people.
Apparently per Redfin 8.5% of homes in the US are 7 figures or more. We're not talking the 1% here.
In California the median home price is almost $800,000.
I'm in a HCOL area in Washington State and regularly see 3bdrm and sometimes 2bdrm condos for over 1 million.
Not to mention sure your home is equity or net worth but most people only buy one and sell it anytime they move. Many of these people also planned on selling it / downsizing in retirement and converting it towards their retirement fund.
Remember that "afford" doesn't mean they have a million dollars. "afford" means they saved up a down-payment and then paid interest and mortgage payments (sometimes barely scraping by) for at least 30 years. Usually many more years if they moved from smaller house or a condo to a larger house when they decided to have a family (thereby starting a new mortgage for another 30 years). Or worst case, they haven't paid it off and now are underwater on their mortgage.
The banks are the ones making crazy money on all this.