Yeah maybe that metaphor is pretty obtuse.

What I mean is that speculation bubbles don’t always have much basis in real value. Housing in particular is highly leveraged. People buy a house without having all the money for it. Banks lend them the money but they’re not entirely liquid either. The mortgage gets sold and resold, bundled into investment vehicles and derivatives. Families count on their house to be some kind of “investment” and rely on the bubble to fund their retirement. It’s a big network of over-leveraged actors. It stumbles onward largely on its own momentum, but it can be totally hollow, a bubble, a “zombie.”

Renters on the other hand pay cash in hand everywhere they go. Nothing they do is permitted to be a loan or leverage. Whenever renters appear in the diagram, actual cash is flowing in. “Blood infusion.”

Maybe I meant vampire, not zombie.

To offer an example: I bought my first home in 2006, right before the big crash. I got a loan with very little down during the subprime lending spree. Then the crash happened and I wound up upside down on the mortgage. Shortly after I also needed that freedom to “vote with my feet” and move that you speak of. Know what I did? I rented the place out. I paid the mortgage, taxes, and repairs with the rent cash while the market recovered. Even pocketed some monthly profit. And once the market roared back, I sold the place at a big profit.

I was the person over-leveraged, actually at negative value, the zombie, but by feeding on renters, I was eventually made whole.

So when you say you rent because you l’re disgusted by the whole speculation market, I don’t see how that’s a solution. The buyers/sellers are still feeding on you as a renter. You’re maybe the only party in the entire picture who is always there with ready cash in hand, while everyone else is engaged in a gang-bang of credit leverage.