[tshaddox]

My point isn't that people don't use their collectible homes to live in. There are undoubtedly some vacant homes used as collectibles, but that's not the whole problem. The point is that the value of the homes are largely divorced from the fact that people need homes to live in. The fact that home prices have skyrocketed recently (and certainly not simply due to population growth or a reduction in supply) ought to make this fairly clear.

> Additionally it kind of strains belief that people are buying homes, paying property tax, etc. just because they like collecting them the way a kid likes collecting pokemon cards. More likely they'd buy a home because they expect home prices to rise and they'll be able to sell the home for more in the future.

That second sentence is, of course, precisely what I'm talking about. Although that is also the same motivation, at least in my experience, of a lot of Pokemon card collecting. When I was in middle school, you could buy a Charizard for $100, and it wasn't because you could win back that $100 by playing that Charizard in a tournament, and it wasn't because you got $100 of value admiring the aesthetics of the card. Also of note, those Charizards now sell for tens of thousands of dollars, and it's still not being of their value in competitive play or their aesthetic value.