your definition of "good investment" is not a workable definition because you're basing it a priori on the future outcome that you don't know yet: "if that appr

your definition of "good investment" is not a workable definition because you're basing it a priori on the future outcome that you don't know yet: "if that appreciation increases in price faster than wage growth or inflation it's a good investment" What is a house's expected appreciation compared to inflation? that's all bound up in the "crowdsourced" current market price already. It's something else that makes a house a good investment, rather than your definition, and I tried to illustrate that in my first answer by pointing out that stocks are good investments without knowing precisely how individual stocks will perform in the future.