> Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all.

Roads are a perfect example of a good investment that is accessible to all. It's called a "common good", and it exists.

Who's out here speculating on roads?

Nobody, and it should be the damn same with housing.

ASTM, sovereign wealth funds, etc. Toll roads can be a pretty good investment.

OP means something more like "a security which appreciates on average faster than inflation", AKA an asset I can purchase and hold and sell later for more than I paid for it+improvements in real terms.

I think we should shoot for house prices increasing at exactly the inflation level (after a correction for current high prices of course). To me, this would be good enough to be considered a 'good investment', and wouldn't be unfair to future generations.

The BoE desperately needs more knobs to control inflation, diversifying into house building is actually a great idea.

Do you think central banks should be given jurisdiction over fiscal policy? Historically, they have been limited to monetary policy, no?

I don't mean to be a jerk, and this isn't directed at the parent poster, but when someone makes an argument that contains an unsound point that in a vacuum cannot hold up, that unsound point critically degrades the entire argument.

When someone includes statements in an argument that can be trivially disputed, they should fully expect those weak points to be disputed. The rest of the argument, imo, does not deserve critique until the trivially disputable points are resolved.

I didn't make an unsound point, there was a misunderstanding by you. When talking about financial assets or investment, accessible means affordable, but affordable is a relative term, whereas somethings accessibility is a useful observation - "can working-class people buy one easily?"

I think the parent commenter meant "investment" in the narrow sense of "financial security" and not in the broader sense of any activity that generates a figurative return for the effort applied — in the case of roads, turning government action into economic activity.

I mean in a financial sense. A good investment with a high guarantee of high return cannot also be financially accessible to all (read: affordable)

This is an easy explanation, but not the whole story -- single-family homes can be a good investment even while allowing the construction of apartment buildings.

Without the limitations of zoning, a single-family home could be worth the same as several apartments in a 4-plex minus construction costs. As density increases, low-density housing becomes more valuable, and high-density housing remains accessible, a process that then resets for the next generation.

Whats tricky is getting the investment to continue to be good once you are in the condo stage. So many condo owners hate owning condos because of how hamstringing it is. It seems like a natural march that one day a low density apartment will grow to a high density one, but how does that happen with condos? A few might not want to sell or go along with whatever change to the building and could hold up the entire process. Its like the situation where your nimby neighbors won't let you turn your home into an apartment, but now these people live in your damn building with you too. Its part of the reason why a lot of buildings in nyc are so old, turnover is tough when you have a building full of people already.

Doesn't need to be easy for any particular condo -- just needs to be more appealing to own (in) a 4-plex with a yard than a larger faceless tower?

You can't exactly force people to sell SFHs either, but that doesn't stop developers from finding a few adjacent parcels to join together. (Rather, it's not the difficulty that stops them, it's typically zoning.)

Sure it can be. You can have some bare minimum of housing available in the boondocks which is cheap and accessible to all, and then have much more desirable housing which may be a good investment if the region is up and coming.

Every government has attemped to balance these two things, with tax credits, trusts and public/social housing tenders. But you cannot escape market forces on everything from materials, labour and the rest coming into play. The macroeconomic environment for it being a good investment needs to be build primarily, and then any accessibility intervention comes next.

At some point it becomes a government handout. Ok, so every person of 25 gets a 90%-off-your-first-home-voucher. So all the private companies building homes are getting 90% of their money straight from the government. This very quickly leads to a nimbyism/conservative local political environment which puts a stop to it.