Note that a Georgist tax on 100% of land rental value does not stop the landlord from earning a return on their improvement values. The land tax of a property with a 100% land tax will decrease the land price down to $0, and thus instead of for instance putting $500k into buying land and $500k buying apartments, they could instead buy 2 $500k apartments for the same capital cost. The end result of this will be more apartments, which will bring down rents, but this will yield a higher ROI than they currently achieve, since they have to pay less rents to the banks.

> I am saying real estate can be a good investment even if it doesn’t go up more than inflation. Do you disagree?

Yes I think so. You need rents to escalate faster than maintenance costs (which are tied to inflation closely) for this to be a good trade. So again - for rent to become relatively less affordable over time.

It sounds like you are not considering rental income (the argument I made in my original comment). You only need growth of rental income to exceed growth of cost for it to be profitable to be a landlord. Am I incorrect?