What if you have already “borrowed against it” and the thing you bought is the house itself? You know, a mortgage. How is a regular family with a mortgage not middle class?

Any age considerations here? 50+ year olds with no pension whose entire net worth is tied up in their home are not middle class?

A retired couple that have a reverse mortgage on their home to supplement their insufficient income are not middle class?

Honestly, even a regular person that busted their ass to pay off their house and who eventually bought a run-down property that they poured all their free time for years to fix up and rent out is not suddenly a member of the 1%.

You know what, I “own” the house my 4 kids call home. I owe pretty close to what it is worth and I can barely afford anything else with mortgage rates where they are ( certainly more than rent would be ). It needs some repairs that are going to force me to borrow from somewhere. I work two jobs ( decent ones ) trying to keep it all going. If I lose the house, I will end up with a net worth lower than a homeless person. And I have dipshits on the Internet lashing out at my wealth and privilege. For the love of God, who are you people?

We're using different definitions of the word "rich". In my definition, the one I personally see as more useful because it aligns with class struggle and shared policy interests, having a bunch of wealth parked in a passive asset is not enough to tip you over to the group of people who benefit from inequality.

On the "sell it like any other asset", you still have to live somewhere, those places cost money. On the "borrow against it", now you've got debt (that costs money to have), I guess your saying anyone with that much money should be able to make more money off it via leverage than they use?

When i think rich, i think doesn't have to work, but maybe that's independently wealthy.

So in that case the middle class were always "rich" by your definition