I live in a tree-fort I built myself in that big tree oak tree in your backyard. Go look out the kitchen window - see - that's me waving down at you.

wait, i've got soem other ones:

1. Underground Bunker
   
2. "Undisclosed Location"

Tipping Sacred Cows

Back in the USA I have a condo with around 30% equity whose mortgage (plus a slight profit) is paid for by renting it. Back when I lived there, the tax incentive for ownership were pretty strong -- you deduct all the mortgage interest from your tax bill and if you sell after 2 years, the profit from any housing price increase was also tax free.

In the UK however, the opposite incentive applies; there is no mortgage interest deduction and moreover if you buy property over £275k (or so) in value, you pay an extra luxury sales tax to the government. Now £275k might sound a lot, but I dare anyone to find a decent 2bedroom flat in London going for that rate. Unless you are madonna-level rich, you rent. Optimally you live outside London and commute in on the trains -- driving in London can cost you £100 pounds per day plus parking.

Even rental in the UK is weird however as pricing is given out on a per week basis. Eg. A flat listed at £500 really means that it costs £2150 per month -- the calculation is that there is 4.3k weeks in a month. While the real estate market has begun to cool off in london, most people here would consider Manhattan apartment rental  prices to be "cheap".

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

I have one not in your list - Co-op.  Uncommon any place by the east coast, I live in one of the few Co-ops in Chicago.  Take all of the pain of renting, and combine it with all of the pain of a Condominium, and that will give you a pretty good picture of Co-op living.

Getting a loan for a Co-op is a bit weird, as you are actually getting a loan to purchase shares in the Co-op corporation.  So you don't actually purchase your unit - the Co-op corporation owns the entire building, and leases the units to it's shareholders.  In a sense you do own property, as you own a portion of the corporation that owns the property, but you really don't "own" your unit in any meaningful way.  The lease on your unit can be broken in any number of ways and you are extremely restricted in the modifications you can make to your unit.

A few years ago, my parents finally sold their small business which they've been running for a decade.  Originally, they were thinking of buying some kind of small house or another to rent it out for their monthly income since they are now retired.

However, after looking into rental rates for houses as opposed to commercial spaces, they ended up buying a small commercial space: a little lot with a convenience store that sells hot food.  They tell me that the rent they can charge monthly is much better than whatever they could have charged for a private residence.  I don't know what the taxes are like.

Personally, my parents lead such a nomadic life when I was a kid that I get an itch to move every few years, so I always just rent an apartment on one year leases.

I stay warm and dry by killing grizzly bears (with my bare hands) and hollowing out their carcasses.