Topic: When debt is an asset (Read 553 times)

In my country both the government and the banks offer a negative interest rate. This means that you have to pay money for them, for them to accept my money as a loan. This happened because many people want to leave their money with banks or the government and they want to get paid for the security they provide. This doesn't even include inflation, which makes it even worse. The only real alternative is to buy stocks or crypto currencies.

Then why should I lend you for a loss? Solely for your welfare?
I guess governments are doing the same in my country as well but banks are not.

In my country, banks are also into a practice of discounting something after some repayment but that never will impact the whole business in negative but some 1% or 2% discount in total interest revenue. For tier-1 and tier-2 countries, debit may remain as part of asset but for the rest of world, it would never be an option when considering against populations.

2008 was an anomaly.  In just about every other case, people who took a 30 year mortgage were better off in the long term for having done so and building equity in the property over time.  Real estate has been a central force in creating the American middle class over time.

If I borrowed 500,000 U.S. dollars 20 years ago, my salary was only 1,600 U.S. dollars at that time, and it will take 30 years to pay off. Now I have repaid about 600,000 U.S. dollars, but my salary is already 16,000 U.S. dollars. If so, I will borrow. A lot to invest. There are some unofficial loan companies whose customers have not paid off their loans, but the loan company has gone bankrupt.

Negative interest rates cause headaches for all sorts of banking infrastructure and are not a natural state of affairs - central banks would rather not have such a situation. It effectively means that people are hoarding money and the central banks are trying to force it to be spent on assets. That's why in Europe you'll only see negative rates applied to people with over a million euros in the bank, which is not the case for many people at all. Banks are also companies that are trying to make a profit, so you are unlikely to ever see negative rates applied to any credit product offered to the average consumer, as that would be part of the margin that they will take. Mortgages are already one of the cheapest products out there due to the large sums involved and long timescales, they have created a lot of equity as inflation causes the underlying asset (the house) to rise much faster.

but there are also collaterals that have long since stopped, and assets are not immediately auctioned off. and in the end we can negotiate with the bank, so that we get relief, sometimes even only the principal debt. but are we going to be like that, I don't think anyone wants to add to the burden

I don't know where the profit of negative interest rates is, and I haven't heard of it, but I think the more debt you accumulate, some unplanned things or accidents may happen, because no one can predict what will happen in the next 25 years. Imagine that 25 years ago, compared with the present, the value of the goods in the past may not be half of the value of the present.
I think that when the economic situation allows, you can choose to complete the debt as soon as possible. I think that the accumulated debt will only increase the pressure of daily life. I don't like the feeling of burden.

This is an issue where those who are in countries where the credit model is the boss, when you can acquire a house, or any real estate, the calculation based for the payment is extracted from the payment capacity that the person has, can sound very friendly, but if you fail in the payments, it can turn into a nightmare, so bad that it could be left in the street.

Interest-based debt here is usually disguised as a sheep when it is a wolf, and that is where the success of credit systems is, although they can offer you the security and stability that people deserve, it forces them to be slaves of a payment, that is, Interest + capital = Slavery.

I do not know which is better, if this system or that of countries like the one I am in, that you must have the payment in effect to be able to acquire your house, since it is impossible through credit systems or through a loan in a bank due to the galloping high rate of inflation.

Wherever it is seen, for banks, debt will always be their greatest asset, only that in the countries of Europe, the USA and those that use this credit system they will never lose.

Even one use the mortgage to get some immediate money.But the thing is we need to get back the assets in a short period or else. Our gold or assets was get into mortgager. Mostly it's a loss, if we keep them and skipped to get back. Most people will skip to get back the assets. At the final, the mortgager will win.

That is quite a common thinking: I made my mortgage payments quicker so I got the house paid earlier. Good, that will certainly give you a degree of assurance on your living, however, if you consider what other things you could have done with your money during the last decades, you may change your view.

You saw your debt as a problem and a burden, even if it was collateralised, instead you could have bought stocks of google, microsoft and others and you would have multiplied you money. You could have used that debt as an asset.

It's bad for interest rates to be approaching zero, let alone negative interest rates. It encourages banks and private entities to hold their fiat instead of circulating it into the economy. Less money supply and less circulation is bad for the economy. The centralized banks shoot for at least a 2-3 percent inflation rate, it encourages spending. If interest rates are too, central banks will fire up the printer or start taking on debt in securities in order to inject new money into the supply.

If your consideration in investing such as buying a house on credit or building a house while renting it is because you can design your own choice of home, this doesn't seem like a pretty basic consideration.  If you take a good look at the debt schemes that were taken over 25 years ago, renting a house and spending all of your savings on building it, doesn't this sound like good investment management.  You've paid double and you've wasted the opportunity to allocate your savings to something more productive.  A house is a basic need and its value is always increasing, why don't you choose a loan for the house you want according to your design.

well you have a point  and you did great decision on paying it earlier than expected. but not all people can pay more than the decided amount.

But the choices you stated is also good but IMO you can add another choice that is to rent a house while building your own home. Though it sounds like you have to pay double but still you can decide to rent a house with a small rental fee while building your house. If you build your own house you can decide its design and plans. And also you can have it for at least 2 years than the other one that you will pay for 25 years. Well it can still be your asset without being in debt.

I would not call it fear, I would called being cautious. Debt is normally used for business that require large "CAPEX", that is, large spending on physical assets that usually preserve their value for a long time - like houses or offices buildings. Buying they assets your have described with a 50% leverage is perhaps a bit of a risk - so your have been prudent on your decision. They key question you should ask yourself is "how much could the drop in price of assets could be in the future" and then decide on leverage ratio.

here in my country home loans are very helpful for those who are just starting a family...

each country has different interest rates on property loans and fortunately in my country the interest rates are quite low so it really helps young people who want to own a house. I also follow the home loan program held by my government and this is one of my long-term assets.

I also subscribe to this mentality, after all not everyone is going to have the money to buy a house or a car with cash and if they are willing to pay a little bit more for it on the form of credit then they should be able to do it, the problem comes when everything can be purchased on credit, because now people have more chances of making mistakes and to destroy their financial future while having nothing to show for it, so predatory tactics become widespread and even accepted and this creates precisely the scenario we are going through which is not going to have a happy ending for a lot of people.

Wait a minute.. as far as I know negative interest rates apply only to retail clients on DEPOSITS. I don't think you can get an actual credit/mortgage and essentially earn money for carrying the credit. That would ruin the bank's business model. Debt is a good thing when it is well covered by your income and the benefits produced by it overweigh the interest rate.

Your friend who decided to bury himself to debt did not commit to a smart move at all. Borrowing, regardless of the value, is not an ideal thing to do when entering crypto investment not unless the timing is in his favor. If all of a sudden a bull run consecutively occurs right after you took the risk snd borrowed monet. Maybe in central banks, it is more likely to happen, wherein there's a great possibility that your profit is guaranteed yet not that much. You should always choose to invest only with the money you can afford to less and not with the money that you just borrowed.

This is exactly what me and my friend considered recently. We considered a few crypto operations there, mainly 2 things ; crypto mining and crypto ATM as well in few places, along with a few non-crypto stuff as well, such as Laundromats and vending machines, if you own the land yourself (like a few Laundromats) then you can put in bitcoin ATM machines and vending machines (and maybe even some coin pusher like arcade stuff) in front or inside of your business as well, and one warehouse for the mining operations.

We calculated we wanted 5 places total, 1 warehouse, 4 Laundromats, two in Toronto, one in Montreal and one in Ottawa, the Ottawa one looked like the least profitable business among them all.

We both have cars, and we both own our own houses, so if we sold 2 cars and 2 houses, we could afford to buy half of these right away, and the other half would be 20 year loan, everything ready and confirmed for us as well, bank was willing to give us the loan. Only thing that kept us from doing this was: fear. Debt is not an easy task, if you fail to pay it, you lose what you have on top of what you already sold. It is really not easy stuff. One bad year and you are done, own zero, nothing.

It depends on the location as well, nowadays most people ended up with long term loan while the actual value of the property is very less. Even I support the buy house over the rent but the user should consider the location, interest rate and their potential of bringing income until the mortgage ends and much more.

Although I generally agree with what you say, be very careful with what I have put in bold. House prices do not always go up. Precisely for thinking that, many people got into trouble in the 2008 crisis. In the short term house prices can go down, and if you are over-indebted you may have a problem.

Moreover, in general they are a good hedge against inflation but we must think about how much is due to the real increase in value and how much is due to the devaluation of the fiat currency that you use to buy houses.

It might seem ridiculous for some people regarding debts, since the inflation rate and the interest don't make sense for some people. However, it's the only choice for someone else when they don't have enough money to afford something, and never will. Should they save up for 25 years before they could afford a house? no right. I guess it's good enough for him to mortgage a house, although the debt is difficult, but yeah that debt can be asset. He has house now, he can use it anytime for asset. The certificate for the house can be used as guarantee too if you need money, it's asset. If the price went up, since property always go up, it's such a great asset and you can gain profit from it.

Not a crazy thought when it has already happened with short term interest rates.

Negative interest rates are only novel when it comes to retail interest rates. When it comes to central bank policy rates, many countries, including the EU and Japan, have already seen it happen in the past (or even present).

Especially with COVID, a lot of countries are feeling the need to stimulate the economy with ever lower interest rates. This system is NOT sustainable.

I am this kind of person too.

Renting or loaning are the only options someone has if they want a comfortable place to live in. Both have their pros and cons.

In renting, you have no tax obligations because you are just renting, obviously. The landlord is the one responsible for the tax because it is his property. You can freely jump from one place to another because you are just a tenant, meaning you can move any time depending on your signed contract with the landlord. This is nice for those people who have to move from one place to another for various reasons such as work. They won't worry too much about a property they would leave behind because they don't owe one in the first place. However, this is costly IMO. Renting can take up a lot from your budget and when you calculate it, you could buy or build a house with that (if you want to).

Meanwhile, in owning a house by loaning, you will have a property that you can call your own after years of paying diligently. You will just have a hard time at first by paying monthly or yearly. It's like you are renting, but you're going to have it soon after. Although if you will compare the cost, paying monthly loans for a house is way more expensive than renting so you gotta have a budget for it to avoid penalties and additional interest rates. Owning a house via loaning is a good choice for those people who have planned to be settled in one place. It would also be a good decision for those people who want to have a family of their own. The cons of loaning a house are that it is costly and you are the one responsible for everything in it such as repair and maintenance. Other than that, i think it is a great form of asset because its value increases over time.

Just make sure that you didn't exceed on your profits so that your debt will not be a burden to you, If you manage well on your debt for sure those will became positive to us. But aside from this maybe we should check on where we spend our borrowed money since if we just take a loan then use it on crypto then maybe we can say that you are in bad place since we know crypto is kinda not good option if we talk about taking loan and use it on this area.

The most people prefer to acquire assests by taking debts these days and prefer to pay them over a certain period of time.It may have positive as well as negative factors like you get extra burden on yourself with embracing interest rate over the debt amount for certain period of time along with principal amount.But you can easily have what seems not under your budget in short span of time so you can say you have assests that you can't have and own easily with your income.But in the long run prefer those things that don't put certain burden on you and trap you into vicious circle of debt trap.

When you take a long-term loan, the debt will eventually fall on yourself, and the higher the house price, the heavier the final debt. The annual price increase of the house exceeds the inflation rate, resulting in the value of your original mortgage being much lower than the value of your house in the future. This ongoing pandemic may make the borrower unable to pay the interest.

The fact that negative interest rates are a norm in the US/EU doesn't mean that the banks are throwing money at the people for free.The are application fees and down payments.It's not that easy to get accepted for a loan.
Anyway,I get your point.In a financial world dominated by negative interest rates,saving money is not worth it and debt becomes really desirable.Thank God we have Bitcoin,so we don't have to bother about where to save and invest our money.

15 years ago (more or less) Minister of Finance, and all other relevant institutions, advised people to take a loan in Swiss Franc, with a very low (the lowest ever) interest rate, a lot lower than if you take a loan in my country currency or in Euros! Swiss Franc was under $0.5, now it's almost $1.1! One client took a $50k loan in Swiss Francs, after 8 years of paying the loan he owes +$20k more!
So I am not buying that negative interest rate, there's just something you don't see, and that something will show up sooner or later, and it will fuck you up!

Debt is an asset! It's a powerful secret weapon! Without debt, modern slavery wouldn't exist!


For people who would like to read the full article: https://www.cadtm.org/Debt-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction

It is not very clear what you are saying. Which country are you talking about? As far as I know, in countries where the interest rate is negative, it is negative only if you deposit your money, not if you take a loan. Therefore we cannot talk about free money. Free money would be if you were to ask for a personal loan and the interest rate was -2%, but what happens now, as far as I know, is that if you ask for a loan they charge you 4%, or 8% or whatever depending on your personal situation and if you leave your money on deposit is when they apply a negative interest rate.

just found out there is a negative interest rate, there is a plus plus in my country, you can clearly say that you are given free money,
I personally stay away from debt at this time and so on, because debt is only a shortcut to speed up wanting to own goods or anything, what's more, in my country the interest rate reaches 2% of the loan if the interest rate is late the daily rate runs

Around 10 years ago, former comptroller of the US government accountability office did a nationwide publicity tour. Where he tried to warn americans of the dangers posed by unfunded national debt reaching upwards of $400,000 per household. Of course, at the time he was completely ignored. No one took him seriously except for "conspiracy theorists".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjmCiDB_72g
Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker on The Federal Fiscal Crisis

I don't support the idea of debt being an entirely evil thing. It can be useful and fair in buying a car, a house and things on credit.

The issue with debt is the lenders are usually much more educated, motivated and informed than the borrowing demographic. Over time the scale slowly dips in the favor of lenders. The trend accumulates into growing inequality and systemic unfairness. Until we reach a crisis point, where it is no longer sustainable.

Unfortunately it is not that simple in a society in which everything can be purchased on credit, I agree that credit can have its place but not in the way it is used by people, after all even if you ask for credit for things that seem to be worth it like a house, a business or a college degree as you say this does not mean that it is a good idea, if you ask for a credit to buy a house you could be buying at the top of the market and then lose your house when the prices of houses crash, like what happened during the 2008 crisis, not all college degree are created equal which is why there is a time bomb on the US with those loans and a business can fail before it even begins as it happened to a lot of people during this pandemic.

Actually, the setup is attractive to borrowers but not to lenders.

Anyway, inflation is a feature of the the fiat system which encourages borrowing especially long term. As years pass by, your regular amortization becomes less and less of a burden. If you take a 30-year housing loan, for example, by your 10th year of payment, or even earlier, your monthly amortization could be considered a small amount already since the value of fiat is depreciating over time. The constant devaluation of fiat makes your loan responsibilities lighter and easier to pay in the future. Not to mention that you'll have an increasing salary and the value of the property you bought with that loan is also increasing.

Now if you compare that with Bitcoin or a Bitcoin-denominated loan, for example; supposing you borrowed 1BTC just 5 years ago, would you be having a harder or an easier time paying it now?

To add to this, the lending of money is done at different levels. There is a banking lending, retail and business, based on a fiduciary model mostly, in which the banks lend a multiple of their deposits. There is state debt lending, referred usually as "interest rates" in general, which is the price the government pays for its debt. There is also an interbank rate for lending.

Usually, these are all linked together, negative yields for state debt may lower the rest to negative.


You seem to be clueless about how debt works. It is always compound, simple interest is not used on loans 99.9999% of the times.

I don't like debt and I  proud of myself that the level I have attained today, I owe nobody no shit, not financial or whatever because I fear, when I'm no more, it would become financial burden to my love ones, I always try to contented and never go beyond my limit to the extent of taking debt.
As long as the debt hasn't been settled, that asset belongs to whoever lend it to you, its better you pay it back as soon as possible then you claimed it later.
I can see some comments above me saying real estate and high cost of house in near future. You all forgot "what if analysis".

As far as I know, if people want to take out a debt with a maturity of 25 years so as not to burden the interest, the chosen interest is fixed interest and not compound interest because it will burden the person.  Even though the asset value will definitely increase, compound interest will still be a hassle.  Choosing compound interest is for savings, not for loans.  Like the concept of a home loan, there is still a choice of fixed or single interest and compound interest.

Oh sure you would like get that kind of money!

But I am not sure why the lender would give you money in the losses? Did not understand the concept you mentioned in the OP. I mean 1 buck less for 100, 10 for 1000 and million for 10th, dam, I think lender must need to think twice before going in the debt himself. 

Is there any concept that I am missing out from this lending technique? Or do we really have lenders who bear the losses for us. 

Depends on the housing prices, I mean if it's steady for about 25 years with the mortgage, there's a possibility that your friend taking the mortgage is a good thing since owning a property will only get expensive as real estate becomes more expensive. Also, it's not like the interest rate to be paid is going to be really big because I think that if they were to pay it consistently, they would have it much easier.

This is exactly the mentality that lead to the housing crisis in 2007-2008.  Everyone thought that real estate prices would go up forever, so no attention was paid to price.  People borrowed whatever they could to buy whatever they good.  The market was irrational, and eventually it crashed.  In reality, no asset is guaranteed to go up in value.  Not real estate, not bitcoin; nothing.

Exactly: negative rates are a punishment for holding your own money in the bank account instead of spending them helping the economy recover (I have actually forgot which crisis should they recover from...). Saving is not a virtue anymore.

Which place is that you buy houses on credit? Mortgage is not serving the same purpose as credit, there are conditions, agreement and purpose in mortgage that is different from credit. With mortgage, you have to provide collateral as the mortgage bank will require except you also referring to that as credit if you generalize it as also mortgage.

It is okay to borrow money from either banks to buy or build house and after to make repayment of it.

Their is no condemnation or discouragement via loan from bank or another source, what is the problem is the method of utilisations of the loan, so from my own opinion its encouraging to obtain loan from any angle or form,but if actually you know exactly or understand the concept or nature of investment you really want to use it to establish, loan is good more especially for a perfect traders who knows how to trade but capital become he or her hindrance and also those investors that purchase bitcoin and hold for period of time via waiting for it bull market before selling, so this set of people always be at advantage of loan if the loan did not work against their motive.

Long term loans are good than to have a short term loan, yes the interest might be high if you compute that as a whole but imagine that you can still use your other money to create more source of income that can be a big help to support your monthly amortization, beside long term loans are more affordable.

One benefit of long term loan is that, if you die your house will be paid in full without spending millions of money and this can be good for your family. i have this loan and I’m happy with my decision because I know its cheap and its worth it.

One thing I know is that debt is not always a bad thing as has been portrayed by the society. The right kind of debt has its advantages, of course when used by the right person. I read somewhere that, “net worth and debt are positively correlated: the more debt a household has, the more likely they are to have substantial financial assets.” However, this applies to good debts only. Good debts are assets for example durable investments in a house, a business, or a college degree which in turn make the individual profitable in the long run while on the other hand, bad debts drags the soul of the debtor to the ruins of extreme poverty.

It is basically the way of the banks of saying "we have too much money already and we do not know what to do with it so please do not give us more and if you do then you are going to have to pay for it", basically the contradictory nature of negative interest rates means that not even banks know where to put that money to generate even a dollar of profits for themselves, so they are basically telling you that they do not want your money, as crazy as that may sound, so you need to find a place to invest your money by yourself, which adds money to the stock market and many other markets and try to stimulate growth.

That's what I won't do with what your friend is trying to do.

Just think of it that you'll get to shoulder the payment or mortgage for 25 years. That's too many years even if you can end that early and won't take long for those years, I'll just choose to have my house and save up for near to the selling price and pay the remaining few years after.

It's part of the plan to remove debt as much as you can because it won't let you breath in expenses until you realize that you haven't done.

I get your friend though. Yes, he might spend more money with a 25 mortgage, as a result, but I would probably do the same. The thing is, that, I personally can’t enjoy anything until I fully own it.

In addition, you never know what will happen to you, right now you have a steady job and good income, but in years things may change with the market, economy, personal/health problems, etc. and the more years you’re in debt - the higher the chances that something can go wrong and you can lose the property.

Thus, the sooner you pay something off - the better.

Sometimes I don't understand how people think, first of all just because fiat is carrying a negative interest rate, taking loans doesn't become attractive, because this means money spent today is less valuable than money spent tomorrow, which means no one would actually like to spend, why would you buy a house if you think tomorrow the same house would be available cheaper as the purchasing power of your money would eventually increase? But however, life isn't purely theoretical, In practicality, such a situation won't last long and banks would ensure they lend only at a floating interest rate so that if tomorrow the interest rates rise again bank can earn money from you once again. Also in such times credit availability is easier because the government wants more and more money to flow in the market to reduce the value of your money. So you will still not be profitable at the end of this whole scenario.

I think you have this a bit backwards. The banks are charging people to store money in their accounts because central banks want people to spend money and not hoard it like they are waiting for a rainy day. If you borrow money for a mortgage presently, the effect of inflation each year achieves what you describe because the price of your house increases each year more than the inflation rate, causing your original mortgage debt to be worth much less than the value of your house in the future. Banks in Europe are currently only enforcing negative interest rates on holders of large amounts of money and this is not seen by most people. Regardless of that, the banks are likely to bottom out slightly above zero because they will always need to make a profit and will just stop issuing loans in the scenario you suggest - as it makes no sense to them (as you have ignored the interest rate of the loan in your example).

What I know is that this negative interest rate is a type of interest rate with a percentage below zero per year, which is applied by the central bank with the aim of making commercial banks channel their funds to the public.
and if viewed from here I think one of the goals of creating negative interest rates is to increase economic growth and increase inflation, central banks in the world usually do monetary easing by cutting interest rates. and from the list of countries that have used negative interest rates, Japan is one of the bravest countries because the benchmark interest rate in Japan has been at the level of 0 percent.
There are indeed positive and negative sides to this negative interest rate when viewed from several aspects, one of which when I saw the article there I got a quote from Macquarie in his research which said that central bank policies with negative interest rates and quantitative easing have not been proven to solve the problem. economy, such as inflation and economic growth, although the monetary easing will make the currency cheaper which can help economic growth

Call me a traditionalist ... but if you want a roof over your head... and you cannot afford it... then you have a choice, namely :

Rent a house : Give money to a landlord (someone else) and never own property.
Borrow the Money : Take out the mortgage and pay the interest and own your own property. (Asset)

I own my house... I paid it off way earlier than what I should have, because I paid much more than what was required from the mortgage payments.  (Best decision I have ever made)  

Maybe the negative interest rate is applied by the bank to increase loans from customers, but I also have the same opinion if the customer is already actively making negative interest rate loans then how can the bank receive benefits from the loan program.
I'm not interested in making a loan at this time because I don't need big funds to buy a property or a car.

I would qualify and say that it is not the debt that is a financial asset but the ability to get into debt. The more debt you have, the more difficult it is for a financial institution to give you a loan, and if it does, it will be with worse conditions, such as a higher interest rate. That is why it is always better, if you get into debt, to have a healthy debt-to-equity ratio. If you maintain it, banks will still offer you good conditions if you need to take on more debt.


It would depend. If it's one month, I wouldn't even bother to lend you the money. If it is a year, I would lend it to you because I am sure that inflation will be well over 1%.


It is a personal thing. Personal finance is, just that, personal. If your friend isn't comfortable with debt, it's better to go light on debt. Although it seems financially smarter to go into debt, and in fact, that's what the vast majority of billionaires do.

Your friend may not understand this: Zuckerberg's 1% Mortgage: Why Does a Billionaire Need a Loan?

Or this: Elon Musk, short on cash, keeps borrowing more and more money even as Tesla stock surges

Although getting into debt like this is not for everyone. You have to be financially smart and be careful. The average Joe can go on a liquidity binge if he does experiments like these that can backfire.

I didn't really understand and wasn't interested in this negative interest rate at first but after seeing several articles that said that Trump had asked the US Federal Reserve (The Fed) to change interest rates to negative, I was interested in this.
but on closer inspection I think there is no harm in using this method for countries with chronic low inflation making negative interest rates a more attractive option for the central bank to do. Because it can control the strengthening of their currency.
and this is not without basis because to overcome the global financial crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, many central banks cut interest rates to near zero. A decade later, interest rates remain low in most countries due to weak economic growth.
With little room to cut rates further, several major central banks have taken unconventional policy measures, including negative interest rate policies.
and what I know is that there are several countries that have applied negative interest rates, such as countries in the euro area, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Japan.

I'm not thinking of making a loan in this situation. Taking out a bank loan may be a good option for those who have a steady income every month but the ongoing pandemic situation can overwhelm borrowers with interest payment.

Crypto loans may also be a helpful solution, but we need collateral to do so if the amount we want is to build a house. I really haven't thought about making a loan either in crypto or with a bank so far. I'd rather save than pay interest that's hard to agree to.

What's the purpose of the negative interest rate.? Is it deliberate to encourage borrowing and stimulate growth? And who lends the money, government, banks, regular people etc? I assume typical profit oriented lender would lend in anticipation of profit.Or does the lender profit in another way?

That is indeed an interesting take. I do believe that property serves as a 100% sure set asset that is bound to grow in value over years. Taking a loan for it is positive most of the times. There are companies that do make it all easier and also aid people in the same. I think same might go for cryptocurrencies like bitcoins. I know some people who took loan from a friend or a bank to actually buy some bitcoins and at the end of the day he was not only able to repay it, but he made 10 folds!! But for sure you do need intelligent investment here, this can go the opposite side soon. I do believe that you should not extend it for that long ( 25 years!! ) You might have to give a lot of compound interest that way. But rather, you need to organize yourself, the assets are only worth it if they are not burdening you.

I don't really understand the rules in the United States or Europe regarding buying a house on credit, but why do people prefer to buy a house with a longer mortgage because buying a house with the installment credit that he pays, it will not stop the value of the house he has bought from increasing, meaning that he buys a house with a longer loan with monthly installments it will not stop him from increasing the value of the assets he already owns. The house as a property has a value that always grows every year. Currently, we buy an average house with a value of hundreds of millions Rupiah but in the end of the mortgage the value of the asset will reach billions Rupiah.

It may soon change due to inflation, but as of now we live in a crazy world with the Euro - it is called the wonderland of negative interest rates. For those who are not in the loop, it works like this: You lend me 100 euros and I promise to repay you 99 euros. My first question, how much would you like borrow under these conditions?

I was speaking with a friend that wants to buy a house, mostly on credit as it is usual in many places. He was saying that he wanted a 25 year mortgage because he would like to have the house paid as early as he could. However, my take on this is that given the ridiculous interest rates, I would rather do like Europe or US and have that debt ... forever