The way I see it, NGU on houses is mostly a fiat phenomenon in mostplaces, sure in some places house ngu is a function of low supply and restrictive laws on new building (I hear Canada is a very naughty boy in this regard), but 100 years ago, housing wasn't used as a store of value like it is now.
If you ask 90% of people, they will say real estate is the best investment ever because they only see it going up, issues of property tax, amortisation, repairs, bad tennants etc largey are ignored.
There's also some psychology to it, like my mother-in-law bought up a ton of flats in Moscow in the early 2000s because of a lack of trust in both banks, government, and currency, so in this case, smart move.
But do stackers think this will hold true in the coming decades? I mean, birth rates are falling, so less future demand, but if we stay on a fiat standard and private equity still wants in, I can't see much changing
At pretty much every point in human history landedness has been wealth, or at minimum, the bottom rung on the societal ladder. Without land, you're a serf.
Wars get fought over it, and people risked their whole families lives to cross oceans or settle frontiers long before fiat.
It's not a store of value, it is the value. You'd be hard pressed to find a Bitcoiner who's moon dreams don't involve upgrading their real property.
Financialization of homes didn't emerge from nothing, it just made real equity more liquid which enables leverage, that's really all a mortgage is. It's the bulk of peoples net worth because it's the common thing you have to own with some stability.
Now, a condo or apartment isn't the same as being landed, arguably neither is a house on a postage stamp lot in a dense neighborhood with onerous local ordinances... that's just the crop. The land underneath it is someone else's farm and the resident is the crop yield.
That''d just be a dip, demographic changes swing. Baby booms happen suddenly.
Dips also get bought, if landed housing does get meaningfully cheaper, it'll just be acquired by people expanding to bigger properties for more elbow room or adding a summer/winter home. Large blocks of out-dated tract housing will get bulldozed to become green-space that increases the value of new homes.
If you're unlanded, and looking for an excuse not to be, that's because you still deep down desire to be landed. If you're unlanded, but want to be, there's some hope because Bitcoin adds a rung to the ladder.
There's zero escape from your hard wiring that desires a return to Eden.
Yep I agree with this perspective.
And I think the more we try to disconnect people from land, nature, and physical community, the more mental health is going to be a problem in society.
Probably hard to scrape the data for, but I'd really like to see stats like this that only consider home ownership as a SFH and how it changes with acreage. I imagine there's a tipping point somewhere based on the size of the lot since a suburban or rural lot of a few acres is more nature'y than a 200 sqft patio in Queens.
It’s a worse store of value and harder to both acquire and liquidate than bitcoin, so I expect that store of value premium to dissipate.
I’ll push back on the idea that homes weren’t always stores of value, though. They were intergenerational stores of value but weren’t used as financial capital like they are now.
i mean for sure, plus dealing with property tax and tenants if renting is also a PITA, but with bitcoin still seen as a ponzi / filthy drug speculative asset, how long do you think it takes for that store of value premium to dissipate?
I think it’s going to gradually erode. It might even be already. Homes aren’t really moving right now and they’re talking about needing to inject more liquidity to keep prices up.
In the US at least, it seems like the housing market is so distorted by subsidized capital that it's very difficult to tell what things would be like without the subsidies.
For many here, the cheapest access they have to leverage is a home loan. I don't see this changing. But population growth is slowing down and remote work is not going away, so I wouldn't be surprised if the 2030s don't see the up-only price action of the 2010s.
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It will be interesting to see how the AI and robotics impact the construction of new homes. If builders can build new homes 10x faster and for half the cost and pass some of that savings onto the buyers that would certainly draw some of the monetary premium out of houses. If new homes drop in price, existing homes need to drop in price. A couple decades pass and real estate doesn’t look like a number go up only asset anymore.
I think lots of people just want to own a home because of the psychological difference between being a tenant and being your own landlord. Most people aren't sophisticated investors, and the ones that are trying to be wise with their money still are probably thinking in simpler terms than grand economic fundamentals.
Yeah, this is totally normal i think, to want to live in a house as your home and never worry about the landlord jacking up the rent etc.
buying a house to live in, raise a family etc is the way
From 1990 till 2022 the price of fiat money debt steadily declined from double digits down to close to zero.
This pumped up the nominal price of housing and other debt leveraged speculative assets.
Since 2022 the price of fiat money debt is stuck in a narrow band between 0 and 5 % and it is hard to see it moving outside that band any time soon.
Housing prices will be stagnant at best and quite likely fall- they already have in most places in real terms.
Property investment still can be profitable but it is far from the near sure bet it was from 1990-2022.
it depends on us also.
Houses (bough for investment needs) are literally proof-of-work tokens (but instead of SHA-256, work is done via physical construction).
Ask yourself, which proof-of-work token has better monetary properties? Bitcoin or house?
No.
I think housing can remain a store of value, but not in the way people assume.
A lot of the upside isn’t just scarcity. It's driven by credit expansion and constrained supply. Land is limited, but it’s also taxed, regulated, and subject to things like eminent domain.
So the key variable isn’t supply alone, it’s the rules around that supply.
And what people miss is how thin the margins actually are.
Most “it always goes up” thinking ignores:
• vacancy
• maintenance + capex
• transaction costs
• and how sensitive returns are to financing
Cash flow isn’t rent minus mortgage. It's rent minus everything.
Miss that, and you’re not investing, you’re just riding price.
Homeownership isn’t going away. But whether housing acts like a store of value depends on credit staying available, building staying restricted, and demand holding up.
If those shift: demographics, policy, rates, the “number go up” story weakens.
So yes, it can persist, but it’s conditional, not guaranteed.