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That's true, if you are talking about your personal residence you don't really look at it as an investment because as you say if you sell you have to buy something else. It's the second and other properties where you can actually take a profit. Or if you are moving out of Calgary to somewhere where prices are a lot lower.

But one thing that owning does do over renting is it does give you the ability to pull equity out to invest in other things. So instead of investing $300 / month in an investment making 8% to make an extra $288, if you had a home and had been riding this increase you could pull out $100,000 and invest that into something that makes 8%.

Sure you pay interest on that $100,000 but that's tax deductable and you'd be making a lot more return your money. If you made 8% on the investment and it cost 5% to borrow it.. I'd rather make $3000 than $288...

Rather than renting you can also do a HELoC and pay interest only and use that difference between the interest payment and your normal mortgage payment to invest in other more liquid vehicles. Or into other real estate that you can flip for profit.

I don't want my money going to an investment, I want my money going to pay for interest on borrowed money that goes into an investment.