And certainly the U.S. could do more to facilitate homeownership without adopting other things done in Singapore.
Separate from the issue of homeownership and finances, the observation about differences between neighborhoods with mostly owner-occupied houses versus those with mostly rentals certainly fits my experience. The neighborhood where we bought our house in 2019 was sort of mixed, maybe slightly more than half of the homes were rentals. We used to talk to our neighbor (another home owner) about it, and you could easily tell which houses were rentals because the upkeep just wasn’t the same. In that state it was very easy to check the county tax assessor website to see if a house was taxed as a rental or not, and I checked at one point and the tax information confirmed what my eyes were telling me.
In the neighborhood where our new house is, here in our new state, the county tax assessor website is set up differently so the last time I looked, I couldn’t really tell (I am probably just looking at it wrong). But I think most of the houses here are owner occupied, and certainly all of my immediate neighbors are owners based on discussions with them etc. And again, it looks that way — the houses are well-cared for, the lawns and general upkeep are better. It makes a huge difference in the look and feel of the neighborhood.
