The current crisis is going to destroy that nostrum, and reduce real estate to what it is: a depreciating liability/consumable that produces no wealth and that has high transaction costs. Leverage has been the name of the game for 30 years, and the mortgage has been the only way that the little guys could play that in a major way.
There was a thread a while back talking about how to rationally buy a house, and bunch of people mentioned what a great hedge real estate is against inflation. But no one talked about deflation.
Just in the sense that housing, and in particular new housing, had shifted to the rapid-turnover, quickly depreciating model of a consumable: shoddy workmanship, rapid depreciation and rapid discarding of used goods.
At a purely technical level, despite the best efforts of the housing industry, we do not appear to have yet build a significant number of houses that are totally worthless after three years, so I admit some hyperbole in that characterization.
There was a thread a while back talking about how to rationally buy a house, and bunch of people mentioned what a great hedge real estate is against inflation. But no one talked about deflation.
Look at the BONES, man:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/japa...