Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Why is property investment good if properties de-valuate over time?
As some others have pointed out, it's key to remember the difference in market value and accounting value.  To simplify things, book value is the only item that specifically depreciates... it happens in the world of accounting to try to time "when did I use a long term asset?" with "when did I obtain value from that asset?" For a house, governments usually allow owners to claim depreciation of the building over a set period of time. This does not affect your resale value of the house.  Similarly, for a commercial property, governments set laws for how an individual or a company can time the "use" of that asset vs. their accounting. Some companies can have totally depreciated ("zero cost") assets that are still very productive.   Market Property values are derived from 3 specific sources: Value in Trade is an estimate of the value that others would be willing to pay for a similar asset. That's why you can buy a house today, and in a "normal" market, the same house should be worth a similar amount of money in the future. Value in Use can be more interesting... this is where a farmer can extract $100,000 in value per year from 10 acres of land. But as a region develops, a manufacturing company can generate $300,000 per year from the same 10 acres of land. The company can buy out the farmer at a 'fair' price (>$100,000 per year) and still net positive from the investment.  Income Approach tends to be focused on properties that have a cash flow, but can be adapted to other property estimates. It evaluates the current "business case" for any property with the cost of money down, the overall investment price, and the expected value from any returns.  Remember, the market value is very simply, the price you could obtain if you sold the asset at a given time. It is rarely considered in terms of "how much will this go down?".  Book value is an accounting exercise and declines by a set amount every year, because it means you can estimate the "cost" of owning an asset vs the value it generates in a particular time period.