Just because you buy a place for you and your family to live in, rather than "for investment", doesn't mean you won't still reap a massive profit if you downsiz

Just because you buy a place for you and your family to live in, rather than "for investment", doesn't mean you won't still reap a massive profit if you downsize to a one-bedroom 20 years later when your kids are out of the house. (Or if you retire to a country with a lower cost-of-living and no housing bubble, buying a similarly-sized house there for lower than the original purchase-price of your home in the US. Which is exactly how every retiree you see in e.g. Thailand lives like they do: they're not living off a pension; they're living off the "nest egg" they naturally accumulated by holding a house in the West for 20+ years before selling it to move there.)