[eueueu]

Property will always increase over the long term. Unless you're moving every 6 months this isn't a good reason.

Of course selling your house and buying a new one will take a few months, so it does restrict your mobility in that way.

[refurb]

Property will always increase over the long term.

I'm not picking on you, but it's amazing how quickly Americans (not saying you're from the US) forget economic events that happened only a few years back.

There are many places in the US where housing prices haven't come close to the peak in 2007. I knew several folks who lost a ton of money ($100K+) on real estate back then. It seems like all of those concerns have evaporated in the last 8 years.

[atwebb]

Maybe on the whole but your personal investment is highly centralized and is in no way guaranteed to go up over any period of time.

[akgerber]

My parents bought a 2-family in Milwaukee in 1980 for around $30,000. They sold it in 1988 for around $30,000. It's still worth around $30,000, if it's still standing and maintained.

And Milwaukee is not, by a long shot, Detroit— it's still barely below its peak population. Wages have declined, however— an average young person when my parents were young would make the same amount of money as in San Francisco: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/for-grea...

(All of these numbers are nominal dollars— the house has significantly declined in real value.)

[eueueu]

8 years isn't the long term. Sorry if this wasn't obvious.

[pitt1980]

"Property will always increase over the long term"

what makes you think this is the case?

for all the singularity and robot economy talk on here, if give those things have even a small chance of occurring, over 30 years that adds significant risk to real estate values across the United States

that's essentially like the factory in town going out of business across most of the country

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