Multi family properties can be owned as a condo and therefore as an investment. The idea that land appreciates but the house on it doesn’t is absurd, if you sub

Multi family properties can be owned as a condo and therefore as an investment. The idea that land appreciates but the house on it doesn’t is absurd, if you subdivide into condos the condos don’t own the land the condo association does. But the condos are subject to supply and demand and have a price, either as rent or as an investment as a condo owner. The utility of the land is what has value. That’s why when you look at land for sale it’s not all uniformly valuable. Land that can be used for multiparty housing is more valuable than your typical city single family home lot because it has more uses. A 5000 sqft lot can only host so many people even if it’s zoned for multiparty construction. A 20000 sqft plot can host a bunch of units and is more valuable per sqft as a result. Once it’s been developed into a multiparty development the cash streams on rent or the implied npv represented in the unit price are for the HOUSING not the land - the housing is the useful element. But if you don’t think housing should be an investment, I still don’t understand who you believe should own the housing. Whoever owns it necessarily has invested their capital in it and presumably to make a profit - either through rent, or appreciation, or both. I think the density argument is specious. If you increase density prices may drop in the short term but as prices drop demand increases and supply gets exhausted and you’re back to rising prices, just with more people. To make housing affordable you need to do the opposite and decrease densities by making it unnecessary to live in a small number of extremely expensive urban areas and make it more attractive to distribute people to many different cities. Just cramping more people into small units in SF doesn’t solve jack.