I mean the rights of tenants are such that if you want to live in decent conditions / a stable domicile, you have to buy a house, thus becoming a property investor.
I think the act of buying a house to live in should be considered more an act of consumption than of investment.
It’s not 100% consumption, but it’s almost surely we’ll over 50% consumption and yet people get confused by the fact that a slice of it is forced savings and a sliver of it is an investment and they focus on these latter two more than is appropriate and in so doing are prone to less rational decisions than if they thought of it as mostly consumption IMO.
I think houses mostly do depreciate in value. The land underneath them does not and this can often mask the former.
I live in a nice part of my city. My house is 100 years old, has terrible insulation, very old retrofit wiring, and needs constant maintenance to stave off decline. The house, with all the upgrades over the years, is likely worth about what it was when built. The land underneath it is a lot more valuable than it was 100, or even 25, years ago.
Seems like semantics to me: you can't buy a house without essentially buying land. If you could, I absolutely would.
The fundamental problem here is not one of economics, but of politics. You can't live in a stable, dignified manner without paying to be part of a state-run monopoly (land ownership), so everybody who can does, so land titles (note the word) become absurdly expensive.
There is no real connection between land and living space - multiple story housing exists, and if housing was built to a reasonable density, there's more than enough land for everybody to live in whatever size house they could afford to build.
It’s sensible though to think “Why don’t houses depreciate like used cars? After all, they also wear out.”
Side note 1: There are places where you can (sometimes only can) lease the land for 99 years. This has the predictable effect in terms of willingness to build/improve the land, especially as the lease term is drawing to an end.
Side note 2: these discussions almost inevitably summon the proponents of land-value-tax to encourage denser use of valuable land. They’ll be along shortly, I’m sure.
> There is no real connection between land and living space - multiple story housing exists, and if housing was built to a reasonable density, there's more than enough land for everybody to live in whatever size house they could afford to build.
All land does not have the same or even similar perceived utility to all people. Some land is has much more demand relative to supply than other land.
Kitchens also don't appreciate in value. However, if you're trying to rent a flat in berlin, you'll probably find yourself paying brand-new+ prices for the previous tenant's kitchen.
