> the idea of GP is that a house should not be considered an asset to begin with. it should be considered something like a beard trimmer: you buy it because you intend to use it, not as an investment to flip it later.

It should be like a car or a washing machine -- a capital asset that you use to achieve a goal. The minimum value for a house will always be the price of reconstructing the house from scratch. I'm not seeing that price ever be in the range that a working poor person could treat it like a beard trimmer; which means a home will always und up being large percentage of the capital of the person owning it. Assuming a properly competitive rental market, it would be much better if whatever capital could be scraped together were put into something more diversified.