Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
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Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
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Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#2Old discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471786
Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#3Old discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471786
'old discussion' says it was posted '5 hours ago' heh
Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#4Most will turn up their noses for buying a sofa this way, and yet most folks here will happily suffer just as shocking a cost in order to buy a house.
Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#5Why did this get reposted/ why was the previous hidden?
Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#6What is stopping an entrant going in at 50% APR rates, and competing with these guys on the weekly price?
Or is the cost of doing business where 9/10 people default (mostly because you charged them too much) just that high?
Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#7This is somewhat similar to how nearly all of the middle-class buy houses... by the time they finish paying off their mortgage they've spent twice as much as the original list price.
At least with homes, there is a chance for property to increase in value.
Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#8While this particular example applies largely to the poor, you could write a similar article about the vast majority of Americans.
How about "Why engineers in the Bay Area pay 1 million for a 600k condo" or "Why smart people pay 400k for a 150k education."
Fundamentally, the high price of the couch is really a reflection of the risk made in the "loan." Americans are too leveraged and don't save enough across the board. If credit were harder to come by, and the majority of loans were made with the expectation that the borrow would actually pay off the loan, you wouldn't end up with 4k couches. Also, I would imagine the apparent need to keep up with the Joneses would be diminished because fewer people would be driving the proverbial rent-to-own Mercedes.
Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#9Most will turn up their noses for buying a sofa this way, and yet most folks here will happily suffer just as shocking a cost in order to buy a house.
Which is particularly ironic when you consider that the cost of the house typically exceeds the cost of the furniture several times over.
Re: Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
#10A better question would be "why the poor buy a $1500 sofa"?