It’s almost always both. Basically every single retired person I know in my family or friends of family are relying on their home to be their primary asset/income in retirement. It’s always a much larger chunk of their net worth than any retirement savings, if they even have the latter.

They were commonly called forced savings accounts when I was growing up. The standard advice was to buy a home as an investment vehicle. Every older family member giving me advice would preach about how they don’t make any more land and the price will only go up.

You can - to this day - talk until your are blue in the face to these people that your primary place of living is not an investment, but they will refuse to even entertain the idea even with the stark cold math staring at them in the face.

If these retired folks can’t sell their homes for a huge profit they will be in for some very difficult times a decade or two from now. They are highly motivated to keep the music playing as long as they can vote and show up to local city council meetings.

Depends on the year and the current market mania level. A lot of buying in ‘05-‘07 was crazy speculative for profit.

I think most house buyers are buying it for resale value.

The point is it has value and can be resold later to get your capital back. Housing tends to be a mediocre investment at best but folks do generally expect to be able to get their capital back when selling.