Home is the place we return to from our jobs and chores. It is the safety provided by our parents, it is the playground of our kids while they grow up, it is where our friends come for dinner, to celebrate, or watch a new episode of House of Cards and the all important football finals. It is the manifestation of our ideas of comfort, beauty and privacy.

The space and interiors we settle for will never be the boundless, ultimate realisation of all our dreams and desires. It will be an economic compromise, for sure, but as good as it gets. But it will always be as good as it gets and hopefully even better. Wouldn’t it be nice to have just one more room? Wouldn’t it be marvellous to replace that light bulb over the dining table with a nice chandelier? Wouldn’t it be high time to get new windows before they fall apart?

We like to think of our home as permanent, which it isn’t. We want to be close to work when we are active. We want to be next to bars, shops and restaurants when we are flying high. Our designs for living will grow in tandem with a growing income. We want to have a nice park, some garden, or a playground in the neighbourhood when we have kids. We need more room as our family grows and wish to downsize when children and grandchildren are only occasional visitors and not part of the household anymore. We want a house now, a flat, a studio, or better all three. This is when we talk about the ‘property ladder’, handling ourselves along. Home is the biggest ticket. A ‘lifetime’ decision, even though our lives may change frequently.

The desire for the best possible home is universal, yet the outcome is dictated in peculiar ways by local laws and local culture. In Germany and Austria for instance, tenants are protected. The landlord can neither increase rents above inflation, nor kick tenants out at will. To buy your own property would only make sense when the mortgage is cheaper than the rent, which mostly it isn’t.

Homes can be a dream come true or a necessary nightmare. But one thing they should not be: an investment

In the UK tenants have much less protection by comparison. If you want to stick with a place for a longer time you’d better buy it even when you can ill-afford it. Property taxes and communal bills make home ownership prohibitively expensive in France, and neighbours in the US can make the acquisition of property trickier than passing a congressional hearing. And then, there are people who don’t bother at all and occupy what they wish, or those who call home what fits on a trailer or a camel’s back, like Mongolian herders do.

Homes therefore come in all shapes and colours. They can be a dream come true, or a necessary nightmare. But one thing they should not be: an investment.

This may sound like an odd statement from a financial agony aunt. We all have witnessed how real estate in Malta has doubled or even tripled over the last 20 years, like my own property in Lija. We homeowners are way wealthier now, at least on paper. Why not celebrate a good investment?

By definition a good investment is bought cheap and sold dear. If I sold my house now I would have to buy another property of similar size and comfort. The chances are that such an object would be even more expensive than the one I would have to sell, so any financial gains will be ephemeral.

I might have sold high, but would have to buy even higher. Not much of a profit here, you see?

This is not to belittle real estate as a valid investment class. Money can be made and money can be destroyed in real estate, no doubt. It may in all likelihood even cover the costs of a future retirement home.

The problem I wanted to point out is not so much financial. It is a problem of the heart: if one looks at one’s own home purely from an investment perspective, then she will never buy that new chandelier, never repair her balcony, or hang new curtains, or change the dripping taps, because a prospective buyer would never pay for it. Quite the contrary: the first thing they will rip out is the brand new mahogany kitchen you were dreaming about for half your life.

Such home improvements would be a bad investment, yet the most marvellous way to joy and happiness – happiness that money can’t buy.

Andreas Weitzer is an independent journalist based in Malta. He reports on the economy, politics and finance. The purpose of his column is to broaden readers’ general financial knowledge. It should not be interpreted as presenting investment advice or advice on the buying and selling of financial products.

Please send in any suggestions for discussion in this column to: editor@timesofmalta.com – Subject: Sunday Times Personal Finance.