[Finnucane]

Sure, but real estate markets are local. At least in the US, there are plenty of places where real estate prices are not increasing, because local populations are not increasing, wages are not increasing, and wealthy foreign investors are not looking to park their money in places where real estate prices aren't going up quickly. So, yeah, in a broad, long-term statistical measure, re prices do tend to increase over time, but the distribution is far from consistent or uniform.