Canada

I'd say that would be fine in theory, if "retain its value" meant that housing would follow very closely but tailing local inflation. That won't happen though. As long as "housing needs to retain its value" ideology runs the country, housing will be viewed as an investment and scarcity will cause it to push inflation upwards. Even trying really hard to quell these prices it might beat inflation, and even if it were a success it would take decades of nominal-growth with negative-real-returns to bring those prices to parity with incomes.

So no, even if "technically maybe?" the answer is still no.

Fuck. The. Investor. Class.

The fundamental issue with housing as an investment is that it is a monolithic and non-fluid vehicle, which makes it worse when leverage comes into play. Whereas stocks can be purchased/sold at any time in an instant and have fractional costs (sometimes as cheap as 10$ per stock), houses are not, and fast fluctuations in prices could heavily impact your ability to realize your gains. So it is, on that aspect, a terrible investment.

For large companies owning thousands of units, this is not an issue since they are spreading the risks across the units (by buying diversely located units of all types). They can also quickly execute purchases and sales since they are in that exact business.

So the argument that houses are ways to pass down wealth is misguided: they are terrible ways to pass down wealth, and parents should leave a trust fund or safe investments rather than a house if their goal is to build generational wealth - housing should be passed down for personal reasons.

Housing CANNOT be an investment, and I say this as a homeowner whose house value has nearly tripled since I bought it. I bought a house simply because I didn't want to rent for the rest of my life.

It's obviously absurd to claim to want affordable housing and refuse to cause prices to go down. If housing is an "investment" then you are by definition fucking over all subsequent homebuyers. Everybody needs a place to live.

I don't get what the point is except for investors.

People using it as a "retirement holdings" might try to sell and then find they can't afford to live anywhere in retirement.

People saving property to leave an inheritance have kids waiting for their parents to die so they can afford a home to own.

Absolutely fucking wrong. The immense value tied up in housing is killing the economy...

So written, a condo owner whose property value went up 50% over the past five years.