Absolutely...and "dictates" seems to be the stumbling point....
The market dictates a SELL when a stock that produces no dividend nor splits but has appreciated to ones objective....or depreciated to ones limits.
Housing is a roof and a place to raise a family, pets and create memories...unless it's rental property which I avoid like the plague....unless it is multifamily and managed by a professional property management company giving me limited liability....and absolutely no midnight calls to unstop toilets.....
So many people are of a mind set like yours. Here is a positive story about rentals, which we bought, despite so many nay sayers out there in 2001 as an exchange from our family home we bought in 1983, when interest rates were 14%. We took the profits and bought a 10 unit apartment and a nine unit multifamily property, leveraging our money to put 20% down on each, with our profits from living and renting our first home for 18 years.
We manage them ourselves, we do most of the repairs ourselves and last year netted about $35,000. Now with being self employed, most of our lives and no pension plan or possibly no social security, we figure we will keep them, pull our hair out occasionally managing them, but will have a nice flow of income when we retire and they are paid off in 10 years.
Real Estate is a fantastic long term investment, similar to the stock market. The flippers and speculators give each a bad name and scare people. Where else can you turn an $83,000 investment into over a million dollar asset in a 20+ year time period? Only in real estate.