[joliveira]

"If any government really wants to promote sustainable home ownership for all their citizens, they'd make homes a financial deadweight for people that aren't fully utilizing the home themselves."

This! In Portugal it is common for rich people to buy apartments near universities just to rent to students. The thing is, people who are rich enough buy several at once and get nice discounts on them (investor discounts they call them) and they will use the houses to make money with the rents. If you are just a regular person looking for a place to live you might negotiate a bit on the price but you always start at full price, not discounted.

I wouldn't go to the extreme of making every home you possess, except the one you live in, a financial deadweight but make it increase steeply after maybe 2 or 3 places.

[devs1010]

I just don't know if this can happen... buying real estate is one of those American ideals that everyone seems to aspire to. Hell, I even do basically because its a favored form of relatively safe investment here and you get tax incentives for it. I think we are at a bit of a crossroads where a lot of things need to be re-thought, however, as investing, as a whole, needs to be re-examined to figure out what truly is sustainable and good for the future. Maybe new opportunities like investing in asteroid mining, etc are what we need to start putting capital into something more productive and good for humanity than just inflating real estate prices.