> During the great suburban expansion, houses were parroted as your greatest asset and your biggest investment.

The "investment" should not be "I can sell this in 20 years for a boatload of profit" but rather "I don't have to pay rent when retired, only property taxes + maintenance + energy".

Heck, for all I know maybe that was originally the idea. Buying a place that you'll live for 30-50 years is absolutely an investment in your future, regardless of the paper value of your property.

But when property values are wielded as arguments to beat down proposals for growth, for transit, etc, it's clear that this isn't the meaning in use.

Exactly, you know your earnings are going to go down dramatically at retirement; slowly paying off a mortgage over 30 years was the accepted way to make your costs go down dramatically as well in the end.

Unless you end up getting a reverse mortgage, in which case I guess you were renting all along.

A boatload of tax-free profit, the first $250K is tax exempt for individuals and 500K for couples.

You pay taxes on the funds used to maintain the property. So unless you're in a market with obscene growth rates, you still lose money even if you earned capital gains on the transaction.

I just put together a spreadsheet assuming 1% maintenance, 1% tax rate, and 3.5% mortgage rate on a 250k house. You still would need a 5% annual rate of return to make money. After 15 years you would have hit your $250k capital gains limit, but you'd only have $70k in profit after taxes, interest and maintenance. At 3%, you lose money until well after the house is paid off.

I believe with proper documentation remediation is tax deductible in that you can raise your cost basis when you sell.

Further, your mortgage interest up to $750K is also tax deductible, and you have to index the whole thing to inflation. Once you do all that the costs are either nominal or negative on a 3.5% 30 year fixed deducted from a Bay Area income. Until Donny took us for a ride property taxes were deductible too.

This is what it looks like when owners vote.

That is mouse nuts compared to how much people get paid in stock around here

Also "I can recover sooner if my housing costs when I want to move."

In many places of the U.S. house prices don't really jump up that much to call it anything more than a temporary holding vessel for money, much less an investment. The suburbs of Cleveland are an example, where you can still buy houses for 50k within 20mins of downtown. Demand has been low so prices have been constant.

In California, demand is high, and prices have been inflated by constraining supply due to a lack of upzoning. It also doesn't help that CA has proposition 13, which locks you into your purchase price tax rate in perpetuity. You should see wilshire country club's property tax bill, it's like a couple buttons and pocket lint.

But it also decreases turnover. Say its 1970, you buy a house in LA for 50k, have your kids, they move out, you are old and want a smaller place, it's 2019, and your house is worth 1m but your taxed as if it was worth 50k. You can cash out, but if you want to continue to live in LA in another 1m property, you pay taxes on that 1m.

It's like rent control for homeowners only you can also give your house and that sweet sweet 1970 tax burden to your kids, perpetuating the landed aristocracy at the cost of the working class.