| It seems to me that what you suggest with your quoted tweet is broadly true in the current circumstances. But that does not mean it is a necessary truth, or even a desirable one.
I accept the figures you quote about the "worth" of the buildings: but it is important to remember that buildings are not actually "worth" anything aside from what the market will bear.
There was a period before the neoliberal ascent when there were strict limits on what a person could borrow. It was related to income and for a single person it was normally 2.5 x gross income. What that did was ensure that house prices maintained some relation to the real economy, and that had knock on consequences in other areas. Such a policy cannot be viewed in isolation, naturally. It is quite hard to grasp all the implications for they are widespread and they are profound.
It is very noticeable that house price inflation is always greeted with positive words, as in a "strong"housing market, or a "robust" one. Other kinds of inflation are not so described, and it is as if there is a difference between housing and, say, food. The difference is just as you say: a house or any kind of building is a capital asset, and food is not.
There was a debate in academic circles and amongst policy makers some time ago, where the right wing proposed that we should move from a welfare state based on income maintenance, to one which depended on capital accumulation for everyone as a means of ensuring decent standards of living. That debate did not really become mainstream, nor did those proposing the change win the argument. But it has happened nevertheless. A lot of neoliberal policy is like that: it gets sneaked in without a proper evidence base and without informed consent.
For most people, at least in this country, there is little confidence in the will of the state to ensure that one will have a decent standard of living "from the cradle to the grave". For a majority in the past they could realistically hope to buy a house, and so inevitably, in the absence of any other way of protecting themselves, that is what they did. You say that it is not rational to do this, because it would be better to spread investment if profit is the aim. But houses have outstripped every other investment reliably for decades, and people are persuaded they always will. Hence the dismay when there is the occasional drop in house prices, as mentioned in another thread by Frances Copolla: people feel cheated when that happens and they get angry. They do not conceptualise it as an investment market like any other: they believe it is a one way bet, unlike equities or anything else. This is the true "something for nothing" mentality which is normally attributed to the poorest who claim the benefits they are entitled to. So I do not agree with your suggestion that this is not done for profit, at least not as you have proposed it. But you are right that the lie can be swallowed because of the fact that a house has two characters: it is also exactly like food, insofar as it consumes income all day every day. That is easily seen when people rent rather than buy.
The analysis you present of a house as an object representing capital and debt is true, so far as it goes, I think. But this is the all too familiar reductionism of the neoliberal, who has neither the intelligence nor the will to grasp any concept which does not apply to transactions in medium sized dry goods. Everything is a form of those transactions, according to that mindset.
The problem that I see is not therefore whether architecture is a bow: it is if you are a neoliberal and it is not if you aren't. I say that because the house I live in is a flat which is more than 100 years old. It is not fashionable but it is a kind of house which is vey common in Glasgow. I compare it with the far more cosmetic values I see in new buildings, which are indeed fashionable and superficially attractive. What I find is that those buildings don't last. Far from being proper capital assets as that is understood in the world of buildings, they are increasingly disposable and have short expected lives.
In that connection, we have discussed the Burrell collection building in Glasgow, before. It houses an important artistic collection and opened in 1983. Architects voted it Scotland's second best post war building in 2005 and it is indeed a lovely building inside, for its purpose. Only, the roof has been leaking for some years now, and it is to close for really major repairs in 2016, for 4 years. In short it only did the job for 3 decades. Compare with the Kelvingrove gallery which opened in 1901 and is still perfectly functional (it has been refurbished, certainly, but not because of structural defects)
What I take from this is that if architects are now being persuaded that what they are engaged in is merely providing a "bow" for a capital and debt transaction, the bow is raggedy and it is no longer truly applied to a capital asset as it was in the past: it is being applied to carrots
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