Member-only story

Why I Don’t Invest in Real Estate

It Won’t Be What It Used To

Tomas Pueyo
11 min readMay 15, 2024

Real estate has been a great investment for so long that people think it always will be. This is a mistake. I don’t think it will.

Powerful forces have been raising housing prices for decades. But they are now petering out, even reversing. As time passes, housing prices might shrink.

To understand this, we need a very simple rule: the law of supply and demand.

This article refers mainly to developed economies.

Have Housing Prices Always Gone Up?

No.

But you wouldn’t know that, because all your life, housing prices have grown:

Our living memory of housing prices only goes back to the 1950s. In that time, real housing prices have quadrupled. But what happens if we look a bit farther back in time?

Prices only started growing after 1950!

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

Tomas Pueyo
Tomas Pueyo

Written by Tomas Pueyo

2 MSc in Engineering. Stanford MBA. Ex-Consultant. Creator of applications with >20M users. Currently leading a billion-dollar business @ Course Hero

Responses (48)

Write a response

When you say the global population will shrink “soon” I think you mean 2080. So, while I agree with everything you’ve said, it’s possible that in our lifetimes, real estate prices will continue to increase.

54

I found this to be a very interesting article. You interspersed statistics with history, making for an enjoyable reading.

I knew that global fertility and the population projection is down, especially in Russia, Europe, and many parts of Asia…

48

I've predicted, ever since I grew to hate my 30 minute commute to London's City when I was a stockbroker, that the new thing the internet would finish off city centres with all their problems. I was wrong for most of the last 30 years. Then the…

17