[onion2k]

Homes are not investment vehicles to make people wealthy..

A huge number of people use the equity from investing in a house as a retirement fund. They very literally are investment vehicles. You can argue that they shouldn't be, or that there should be a class of housing that isn't treated like an asset, but that would be very hard to achieve without some serious market manipulation.

[rozab]

>or that there should be a class of housing that isn't treated like an asset

No need to talk in hypotheticals, this was once the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_K...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Act_1980

[chriswarbo]

> that would be very hard to achieve without some serious market manipulation.

Note that the housing market's already heavily manipulated, in an effort to keep the Ponzi scheme going a bit longer (e.g. Help to Buy, etc.)

[jphoward]

Isn't Help to Buy only for first time buyers, so it biases against Buy to Lets?

[nannal]

Yes but I imagine the argument would be that it leads to a reduction in supply & increased demand meaning fewer houses available to compete over which results in a higher over all price which can be applied to all houses, inflating the price beyond a houses intrinsic value.

[_0o6v]

There's a very large difference between an individual using a house as a home, then selling and realising any increase in value, vs. a commercial company owning a property as an investment vehicle (in the literal sense - people can invest in the company!) and then letting the property out (or selling a time-based lease to a leaseholder).

[odonnellryan]

We should try and stop this thinking. This is going to hurt a lot of people (my parents included) who are in their 50s and 60s now when they soon try and sell their homes to retire.