At Reuters Felix Salmon has been making the case that a home should not be thought of as an investment. Here's the the Google Trends for "investment property":
I think the biggest argument that one should be careful about viewing a home purchase as an investment is that many people will now roll their eyes at you when you moot the idea. In other words, a substantial proportion of young adults are going to view the idea of getting locked down into a mortgage with a great deal more skepticism than they would have a few years ago. The cultural shock of the late real estate correction is going to have a significant long term effect on demand for homes. It seems that the real estate bubble was driven in part by a positive feedback loop whereby as homes became more valuable due to increased demand, the demand itself began to rise as more & more wanted to "get in" on a "sure thing." Without the expectation of inevitably rising values I suspect that many potential buyers will simply focus on more liquid investment opportunities.
