Housing in past times was a entity that was perfect for wealth building. It wasn’t liquid, so you couldn’t trade it. It wasn’t something that was priced easily or often, so you weren’t feeling the price movements, therefore we hold on through troubled times. It wasn’t something that was likely to go down in value over the long term, at least keep up with inflation. But perhaps more importantly, we all were highly leveraged. We went into the investment with only 20% equity and borrowed the rest. Plus adding the dividend of providing a place to live, Jackpot! The perfect investment, or close to it.

But now, we are too leveraged, instead of building equity, we are spending equity as if it were income, and perhaps worst of all, we are trying to buy and sell as if it were a liquid market with no sales or tax consequences.