I don’t think speculation is a big factor, actually. Rentals don’t earn money without renters and they don’t appreciate nearly fast enough to make up for the lack of income.
In my country at least there’s just measurably less houses than there needs to be.
Most of the time they don’t do that, though, and there’s a good chance if you had rented it out the wear and tear would not have reduced that value very much, so there’s still not a lot of “opportunity cost”.
I don’t think speculation is a big factor, actually. Rentals don’t earn money without renters and they don’t appreciate nearly fast enough to make up for the lack of income.
In my country at least there’s just measurably less houses than there needs to be.
depends on where you are. i bought a new house 3 years ago and within a year the value of my house had increased nearly 100k.
That’s one hot market.
Most of the time they don’t do that, though, and there’s a good chance if you had rented it out the wear and tear would not have reduced that value very much, so there’s still not a lot of “opportunity cost”.
to be fair it’s leveled out since. it’s still up that much, but didn’t continue the meteoric rise.