The truth is that homes deliver enormous non‑financial value — stability, community, belonging. Those are reasons to buy. But as financial assets, they come with structural constraints: They are expensive to maintain, difficult to trade, impossible to diversify, and usually purchased with significant leverage. The investment component is real but volatile, and its return path can be long and uneven. For home buyers now facing losses, this is not an individualized failure. It is the predictable outcome of society promoting an undiversified, illiquid, highly leveraged asset as if it were the ultimate life goal.
It’s almost as if homes shouldn’t be a commodity.
Homes aren’t a commodity, they’re a depreciating asset. Land is what has real value in our society, and this is a cultural development dating back to Enclosure in the Middle Ages. We realized back then that if you don’t own your own land then you are effectively a slave paying rent to someone else for the privilege of having a roof over your head.
I’ve seen other solutions proposed around here, such as government ownership of housing where we all pay rent to the government. What I don’t get is how people can say that with a guy like Trump in power. Do you want Trump to be your landlord? That sounds horrible!