alt Hacker News> [1] Real estate is generally a good investment and will hold value or appreciate in the long term, because supply will adjust to demand shocks to rescue values
Real estate is NOT supposed to be a good "investment" and only became so because the government started propping it up with bank bankstops, zoning, NIMBY, redlining, etc. If your pricing is working correctly, real-estate should be close to zero-sum.
Austin, in particular, had several nasty bust cycles where real estate prices tanked after overbuilding which is precisely what kept the cost of living under control. Alas, that is a thing of the past after 2008 when everybody realized that the federal government will backstop the banks "Real estate number must always go up! Brrrrr!"
For nearly every homebuyer, a home is the largest purchase they will ever make and the bulk of their net worth. It needs to be a good long term investment that at least reasonably paces with inflation, otherwise you are losing money by buying a home and everyone has to rent and then you have feudalism with extra steps.
The good news is this is totally fine with keeping cost of living under control and overbuilding, because prices will go back up over time. Most people aren't going to own their home until the 30 year mark so it really is a much, much longer term investment than anything like overbuilding or other factors can reasonably affect.
The problem is really that people started seeing 2x-10x returns on homes and started treating that like the norm. That is not a 'good investment' that is a 'money printer,' and in most cases the government does not want to safeguard that behavior, but it's hard not to when those same people panic like crazy if their home only goes up 2% in value in a year or, god forbid, decreases in value for a year.
There is really no good solution to that mentality, if there really was one then Wall Street would have uncovered it ages ago to get more people into long term ETFs.