Home ownership as an investment appeals to flyover maga brainlets because their fundamental motivation is grounded in a massive inferiority complex, this perpetual insecurity that manifests as an anti-intellectual black and white outlook
the relative return of other assets, all of the undisclosed costs, the time/effort sunk, etc. doesn't matter, because they equate paying any rent at all as getting taken advantage of
in a myopic world view where every single person is either doing the cucking or getting cucked it's easy to see why they think they're somehow ~gaming the system~