— luxury homes: As discussed in other blogposts, most top school district homes have underwhelming rental yield, because you can’t subdivide them into smaller private units.

These homes are so expensive partly due to psf premium in a premium location, but a bigger reason is size.

They are white elephants due to taxes, maintenance costs etc. In contrast, commercial and prime-location residential properties are both prestigious and high-yield.

Compared to smaller units, these bigger houses are harder to lease out or sell (poor liquidity), as explained in Cambodia properties for China investors #XR and 2BR^1BR rental properties #BGC++

— Grand piano is another white elephant. I always prefer simple, functional alternatives.

— gold:

Jewelry is a white elephant. Poor liquidity, low inheritance value, but Gold is a less white elephant. A kilobar sounds prestigious but you have to pay some security firm to hold it for you.

One advantage of gold coin collection (not kilobar) is that you can buy or sell a small portion of it. Fairly liquid except the lousy bid/ask spread.