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.
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
Wonder if high speed commuter trains could solve chunk of this issue without destroying homes just to put up high rises elites will keep empty like in NYC.