The "fuck you got mine" attitude so many homeowners have and deliberate supply restriction to increase property values makes it a smart investment on paper, at the cost of screwing everyone else coming after you.
https://www.pewresearch.org/2023/12/04/the-assets-households...
In fact, I feel everyone should own and anyone with two properties should be taxed heavily.
Further, when I downsize — even in the same real estate market — that too is equity working in my favor independent of appreciation.
Without the appreciation (and leverage multiplying that), buying housing would be nowhere near as good an investment. (As it stands today, it's phenomenal, of course.)
Building them in random lots in Florida or upstate New York is exactly what builders were doing in the runup to the financial crisis.
Building them in already-dense places is always tricky because of NIMBYism