No matter your view on home ownership, there’s a lot to be said of the ability to stabilize your budget’s largest line item via fixed rate mortgages.
This helps but is just a band aid.
As it happens, While about a third of Americans rent, only about a fifth of Spaniards do: 78% of households live in an apartment they own. That's because regulation is set up in ways that make renting a pretty bad deal. I live in some midwestern suburb, and half of my street rents, as companies have outbid individual sellers when the people that originally bought their houses died or downsized. They are owned by Delaware companies, and good luck figuring out who is really behind them.
So while it might be a good idea to minimize renters, the tie between rentals and apartments in urban living is just regulatory. Suburbs are in no way immune to being purchased by investors: It's just that investors try to aim for properties that are expected to grow up in value the fastest, and it just happens that those tend to be in urban centers and in suburbs that are very close to said centers.
So really, limiting building dense housing is, if anything, going to make the problem worse, as it limits housing supply. If you want to prevent renting, make it a worse deal, tax wise, for companies to own and manage rental property. Again, the very dense Spanish cities do a better job at this than the US does.
We need to step back from the notion that houses should be significant stores of wealth and concentrate fully on creating enough housing so that everyone can comfortably afford a roof over their head. Using the scarcity of housing to build wealth is just short-sighted and will always lead housing shortages because the housing value above construction cost is only maintained by way of scarcity. If there’s enough housing for everybody, which should be our goal, home values will go down and the importance of owning a house goes away.
Two is investment. Land prices in popular areas started rising because of demand. Housing turned into way to make money and build wealth. But it is really land speculation.