Owning Houses Makes You Richer

Statistics New Zealand just released the change in physical and financial assets component of the National Accounts.  The national accounts (change in assets) explains movements in assets and liabilities from one balance sheet to the next for each of New Zealand’s institutional sectors. The accounts show the accumulation of physical assets (eg houses), financial assets (eg bank deposits), and financial liabilities (eg loans).

Rising property prices between 2013 to 2016 contributed 51 percent of the $364 billion increase household net worth over those 4 years.

https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/rising-property-prices-boost-household-assets

When house ownership is the channel for how 51% of household wealth increased over four years, then house ownership becomes the method for households to increase their wealth. .

From here:  https://rbutler.sdsu.edu/gurely2.htm

Marx insisted that "capital" is not a thing but a definite social relation which belonged to a specific historical formation of society. "The means of production become capital," Marx wrote, "only insofar as they have become separated from the laborer and confront labor as an independent power." Means of production are capital when they have become monopolized by a certain sector of society and used by that class to produce surplus value that is, the income of the capitalist class (generally profits, interest, and rent) that comes from the exploitation of another class. Consequently, capital, for Marx, is not only part of the forces of production but it is also a particular employment of those forces, a social relation.

Its difficult not to see concentrated home ownership, the increase in wealth it creates, and the creation of a structural renting class in Marxian terms.