Housing isn’t really an investment

I call bullshit when people call their home their biggest investment, or say that home ownership is an investment at all.

Houses fundamentally are a consumable, they provide for a human need but are intended to be used up and discarded. While with enough money and effort they can be maintained to a high level of habitability and ultimately resold, there is no guarantee of profit even if the sale price is often higher than the initial purchase price.

When I buy my land and build my cabin, I am not seriously considering what will make me the most profit when I go to dispose of it in later years. Maybe the value of my house won’t ever even be a relevant question — if I build what I like and live there the rest of my life — then it really doesn’t matter if the property goes to a negative million dollars in value. Once I’m dead, it’s somebody else’s problem. Instead, I plan to build what I what, regardless of what it does to the sale value of the property in out years.

It’s not say I plan to build cheap, ugly trash that has no value at all — or that I plan to degradate the land and the property. My goal is build sustainability, on a scale that fits me. Not the next person to own my land. To use materials in a right fashion, not because they’re popular or will make appreciate in value in the future.