All around us are embodied the contradictions between homes and real estates, dreams and realities, tenants and owners, residents and visitors. Housing is not just about living: investment and speculation have become the primary purpose of more and more dwellings, as real estate and rental prices continue to grow. City centres are made up of ‘money columns’ where living itself has become redundant. Avoiding depreciation by limiting use leads to homes that have owners but no occupants. Elsewhere, there are residents who struggle to become owners. The sense of stability of the home as an intimate space of one’s own, a place for family history and material biography, is in contrast to the flexible and temporary nature of real estate, of rapid buy-and-sell markets – ‘home’ as disposable lifestyle product.