I think the problem is the rate isn’t high enough. Too many homes are owned by people who already have a home and are using their second, third, fourth homes as sources of income while their primary home is seen as their retirement plan. At the same time, the people who own extra homes are opposed to building high occupancy buildings to create cheaper housing in the same area. You have corporations buying up hundreds of houses only to rent them out. Those get taken off the market, which raises the cost of houses in general.

If you stop corporations from owning single family homes and duplexes, stop foreign investors from buying real estate at all, place a very high tax on owning more than 2 houses, and place higher taxes on short term rentals like Airbnb then you will drop the value of houses by a ton while also generating tax funds that could build high occupancy buildings for lower rent values. Too many people have the ability pay for affordable houses but can’t, because too many homes are owned as income for either people or corporations.

The argument is mostly valid. But the real point is that capital gains tax needs to change. That would solve the stated problem, without reducing home ownership.

As a result, a majority of the population is literally invested in seeing the value of homes always go up.

This is actually not true. In general, ome owners do not benefit from global house price increases.

The self fulfilling prophecy of the housing market is that people who own homes tend to have more wealth and vote in higher numbers. Politicians don’t want to piss them off, home prices can’t be perceived to be attacked.