> The house itself is a depreciating asset just like a car.

You can't compare a house and a car in terms of value.

Both require maintenance and both can decay to unusable if left abandoned too long. That much is similar.

But maintaining a car beyond the point where parts are available becomes very expensive since everything becomes a custom job. There are few 100 year old cars running around and those which exist are a labor of love, but from an economic perspective makes no sense. It would be far cheaper to just buy a new car.

This never happens with housing. You can maintain a house indefinitely, through many generations and it never becomes cheaper to buy a whole new house. (Barring some disaster to it, natural or human-induced, of course.)

So a house can't become a depreciating asset. A roof over your head will always have value (that's why this whole discussion exists, everyone agrees there is value to a home) and since that house will last essentially forever, it can't possibly become worthless.