The New York Times ran a story entitled "Housing Fades as Means to Build Wealth Analysts Say". The article documents the problems of the past several years where housing prices can not be relied upon to automatically increase from one year to the next. Many people have purchase houses on the premise that these year to year increases will help them build wealth; but the events of the past several years has proven this unreliable.
The Brookings just published an article siting the second benefit of home ownership is a way to have a forced savings. They said "That said, I am doubtful that we should be giving up on homeownership as a way for households to build wealth. Home appreciation was only one factor behind the original enthusiasm for this potential benefit to homeownership. A second (and perhaps more important) factor was the view that owning a home induced people to do some saving, first for the downpayment and later through paying down principal as part of their monthly mortgage obligations."
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