Housing wasn't an investment until it was turned into an investment in the 80s. Housing was always thought of as housing before that. It is the same as renting, but at some point, you stop paying rent and instead just pay your wealth tax on it's value.
In the US we treat it as not only an investment we expect to appreciate, but then turn around and treat it as a depreciating asset for taxation purposes if you are buying it to rent to people. It is a double standard that lets corporate landlords buy a property, collect rent, write off the mortgage interest, write off the "depreciation" of the property, all the while the property appreciates in value, creating multiple revenue streams (lower tax bill + higher leverage-able assets + rental income). THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED!
You should not be allowed to "depreciate" an appreciating asset on your taxes and get to lower your bill. If you want to write off depreciation, it should be appraised at a lower value first. Otherwise its book value remains constant (or adjusts for inflation?), and then just capital gains on the sale if someone wants to pay more than book value. This would make it less attractive to investors, prices would actually fall a bit (or a lot, IDK).
Yea it shouldn’t but home owners are in the majority so what are you gonna do about it?
Also both of the parties are fully behind the interests of homeowners, with one of them being really obsessed with helping high-wealth individuals not pay taxes.
In the US we treat it as not only an investment we expect to appreciate, but then turn around and treat it as a depreciating asset for taxation purposes if you are buying it to rent to people. It is a double standard that lets corporate landlords buy a property, collect rent, write off the mortgage interest, write off the "depreciation" of the property, all the while the property appreciates in value, creating multiple revenue streams (lower tax bill + higher leverage-able assets + rental income). THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED!
You should not be allowed to "depreciate" an appreciating asset on your taxes and get to lower your bill. If you want to write off depreciation, it should be appraised at a lower value first. Otherwise its book value remains constant (or adjusts for inflation?), and then just capital gains on the sale if someone wants to pay more than book value. This would make it less attractive to investors, prices would actually fall a bit (or a lot, IDK).