Housing decisions seem to be this weird place where people have a really hard time disentangling their thinking about various things. As someone who's rented most their life, I'm constantly reminded by others that the money I give to my landlord will never come back. But these same people tend to be a little surprised when I point out to them that the money spent on home loan interest, property taxes, the cost of maintenance and upkeep, etc., is also something you'll never get back. Or that a house you live in has some peculiarly unfortunate characteristics when viewed as an investment: extreme illiquidity, not being able to sell only a part of it, generally not being able to sell it without simultaneously buying (or renting) another asset in the same class so that you can keep a roof over your head, how property taxes function kind of like an expense ratio that would be considered highway robbery for any other investment class, etc.<p>But if you point all that out, people also go all weird and assume this must mean that you're trying to argue that owning a home must be categorically a bad idea. Possibly because we're so caught up in thinking of one's own domicile as an investment that we've lost the ability to think about it as just being another useful thing one might own. I've worked out the math and confirmed that, for the amount I drive, renting a car when I need one is much less expensive than owning one. But I own one, anyway, because I value the convenience, and that doesn't seem to be a difficult concept for anyone to grasp. Similarly, I currently own a home and it's much more expensive than my previous living arrangement, but it's worth it to me because I get to choose the appliances, decide whether or not I get to have decent insulation, etc. And that's valid, too. I just don't harbor any illusions that I'm saving any money by paying for these luxuries.