> Rising home values are a zero-sum game. It makes people look wealthier on paper, but there's nothing good that comes from gains in housing prices. This is o

> Rising home values are a zero-sum game. It makes people look wealthier on paper, but there's nothing good that comes from gains in housing prices. This is oversimplifying. A rise in housing prices should lead the more construction of more housing, if costs stay relatively the same, and indeed the inflation in housing prices has grown far faster than the cost of labor or building materials. We have a zero-sum game because supply is restricted instead of allowing the market to respond by producing more housing. Sometimes this is due to NIMBYism, sometimes just legacy zoning practices. China has the opposite problem right now because their central planning built too much housing. But there's nothing special about housing that makes it a zero-sum game. For sure, land is basically a zero-sum game (you could blast apart mountains or build artificial islands, but that's not usually financially feasible), but most countries have large apartment towers that expand the amount of housing available despite the zero-sum game for land. And America has so much land compared to most countries. It's not even funny. It's just mostly wasted.