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.
Like, then don’t buy it as an asset, buy it as home? Its not like people can just wait for some 20 years without home for crash to happen, and crash would likely be tied to some event where everyone loses their jobs or banks fall of whatever.
The run up on housing prices forces most Canadians to put too much cash into rent or home ownership. I think the piece is more pointing out there’s a problem. The fix has to come from policy makers, not individual buyers.
Which is why I like the Japanese home loses value over time approach.
Japan had the same problem as Canada before they rezoned housing federally for density, wiping out hundreds of miles of single family homes to build highrises.
If you see a aerial view of Toronto there really is no city, relative to most metropolis in the world. The problem is entirely government created.
https://www.stockaerialphotos.com/media/08759b93-8ae3-4841-bbd1-cd2886594e0a-toronto-skyline-2016