Yes - in the long run, almost anything goes up against fiat. That goes without saying.
But in the long run we are all dead anyway.
A big part of wealth building is about wealth preservation, ie. Not losing money.
A house is one of the most important asset to most of us - making the wrong call on buying and losing significant money on it can set us back decades.
Yes maybe it goes up in 30 years, but making that wrong call in the initial 2-3 years can be REALLY painful - you cannot deny this. And I think that is what has happened to all the HK folks who bought properties since 2018 basically, and maybe even 2023.
Life is path dependent, and so is wealth building. Timing and sequencing matters - A LOT.
I don’t think you can 100% extrapolate what happened in the 90s and 00s to HK necessarily going forward. HK culture was still quite similar from 80s to 00s, so it was an easy decision for many of us to come back.
However, don’t you think HK has changed a lot since 2010s? To the point where it’s sort of unrecognizable?
In the future, if we keep changing (as we should) to be more in-sync with the One country, then it no longer feels like ‘home’ right? If that is the case, why don’t we just move to Beijing / Shanghai / Shenzhen in 10-15 years anyway? The opportunities are immensely better there.
What kept Hk unique as a Chinese city all these years are basically what is being taken away now. What is the city’s defining quality 10-20 years from now ?