I mean, individually it's just a poor investment choice. But individuals trying to live in their investment properties isn't really the problem.

The modern housing supply crisis is definitely egged on by a handful of mega-funds that can snap up houses en mass at prices which are already inflated. I'm living next to an aspiring AirBnB landlord's newest acquisition as I speak. Very unlikely she's coming out ahead after a year of renting relative to just holding NVIDIA or Tesla. She's definitely not getting any extra houses under her belt at this rate.

But I might suggest that the "supply crisis" is much more an "unemployment crisis", as the gross supply of housing isn't in shortage. It's the location of the housing, relative to the centers of new commerce.

Case in point, Elon Musk is dumping billions of dollars into Bastrop, to rapidly develop an area that's been overgrazed farmland for centuries. Then, when neighborhoods in Cincinnati and Detroit and even San Antonio have a relative glut of saleable real estate. The... ethnic composition of Bastrop has provided a level of appeal. But so has the pliability of the local government, which has historically been run by libertarian dipshits who spend all their time complaining about the neighboring Austin, TX college kids and granola crunching hippies while insisting deregulation and tax cuts are the only viable pathways to growth.

Now Musk has delivered on the growth, but he's cut out all the locals from its benefit. He's standing up his own little Network State of employee-exclusive bars, storefronts, and housing stocks, while driving long-time residents out with the sudden flood of noise and traffic.

Big investors and employers are engaged in all sorts of regulatory arbitrage and capital flight, often for very shortsighted ego-stroking gains, in order to secure an ideological end goal rather than a profitable business model. The end result is massive shiny new suburban development sometimes directly neighboring areas blighted by economic neglect. People complaining about skyrocketing housing costs who live spitting distance from some of the cheapest real estate available, entirely because of modern day redlining and private segregation.

What @gaiussabinus said.

But the math of it is two-fold. Firstly - unless you're deeply in the know - you're always going to do better putting money into an ETF than real estate. Especially true since COVID, when the market's been doing 20-30% annually. Secondly - the real financial benefit of home ownership is the locked-in mortgage rate, with some knock-on benefits when you make capital improvements that pay off against utilities or transportation costs long term.

The cost of flipping a home is enormous - easily 3-6% of the house's sell-value - so the people who benefit the most from turnover tend to be the real estate agents not the homeowners. And the risk that you've bought into a flat or deflating housing market far outweighs the anticipated returns from short term housing flips (unless, again, you're already a real estate agent who can eat the administrative cost of title transfers).

As a general rule, you want to buy a house with a mortgage note you can afford, keep it in good repair to minimize utilities, and then simply enjoy the fact that you don't have a landlord threatening to raise your rents every year. Minimizing future outlays, not speculating on the future value, makes owning a home an attractive financial decision.

Loses value, maintenance, tax burden, regulatory over sight. It is a liability and always pencil it in as a liability. Only the land holds value. If you don't live in it, its not worth it.

inflating prices for one