I came here to talk or respond to folks against seeing homes as investments. Full disclosure I own a rental and over time as my finances allow it I hope to have

I came here to talk or respond to folks against seeing homes as investments. Full disclosure I own a rental and over time as my finances allow it I hope to have a few if not 10 by the time I retire such that I can sell most if not all and have something to retire on. (Not all of my retirement is in this scheme, I've a 401k and a modest IRA). The rental I have was once our main home. When we moved to Berlin we decided to hold on to it and rent it while we were gone in case we needed a place to come back to if our Berlin experiment failed. We bought it with all the savings we had at the time we got married with a <5% downpayment. I had no idea the market would rise like it did. We are still renting it mostly because the rental laws in Portland, Oregon are very much tenant-biased that it would cost us more to sell than to keep renting it. Which is fine. We've a good tenant and we haven't raised rents in 3-years. (We should have but that was mostly because I had bad advice from my management but that's a whole other thread). For the average worker making less than 100k like me without prospects to make multiples of that number anytime soon (or ever -- I'm not that smart) buying a home -- if one is lucky enough to -- and maybe renting it is a good way to participate in the upside of home values and also to create some long term wealth when one does not have the luxury of joining an early stage start-up on it's path to being the next unicorn or making obscene salaries at a Netflix. I fully understand that in doing so I add myself to the market of potential buyers and/or bidders for already scarce homes and with a business mindset I participate in the speculation that is raising home prices for would-be owner-occupied homes. I don't know how to balance that with my desire to have a well balanced approach to my finances which would consist of investments in stocks (401k via mutual funds), savings, and real-estate. The world is only getting more expensive and it behooves the rational person to diversify and seek all ways to keep up so as to not be left behind or without ample funds to retire on. So you might see me as part of the problem but at least maybe now you see where I am coming from.