Only if you completely ignore the mortgage itself. The mortgage puts you into effectively negative liquidity as you have to meet the liability using liquid asse

Only if you completely ignore the mortgage itself. The mortgage puts you into effectively negative liquidity as you have to meet the liability using liquid assets. By paying it off and gaining a home you can sell you've increased your liquidity relative to the mortgage but not relative to raw cash. But as I said above raw cash (or near-cash) is even more conservative than mortgage repayments. > Also, there is no reason to assume home values in general protect against inflation better than savings accounts or other "safe" investments". History gives us a good reason to believe that. Cash depreciates. Homes on average appreciate.