Can you provide any examples of homes that aren't worth at least the original purchase price in absolute dollars 30 years later? Most of the homes, at least in my area, that are 30 years old are worth multiples of the original price in absolute terms. In fact, my first home was about 40 years old when I purchased it and even after the housing crash was worth about 15x what the original owner payed in absolute dollar terms.

Many homes can end up being teardowns after 30 years. That means that not only is the house itself worth nothing, but there'd be significant expenses to demolish it as well, effectively making the value negative. So it's possible to just end up with land value less demolition costs. How much of the current value is based on building and how much is based on land, depends on the property. There's also many circumstances where a house can be sold below 'market' value or forced to sell under poor market conditions such as divorce, death etc. Many people greatly overestimate the liquidity of housing. The paper value of a house is meaningless until it's actually sold for that amount.

15x what the original owner paid in nominal dollars doesn't give nearly enough context as to the real return. How many and which years was that over? What was the rate of inflation over this period? How did the Dow, S&P, or <insert stock market index here> do over that same period? And that's kind of beside the point.

Like I said earlier, I'm not arguing in favour of either owning or renting. I'm just making the same point as the submission, and that is to use full, accurate numbers to make informed decisions. If more people did (and everyone should), we probably wouldn't have such extreme bubbles and crashes.