Not necessarily. If you have to pay rent to live somewhere and instead you built a house that costs you much less long term you reduced your liability a lot. Also in many markets your house is worth next to nothing while your land appreciates in value in skyrocketing pace. Then while you are saving a lot of money on a place to live in, you are also sitting on an asset that will appreciate in price in a long term. In some cities in the world land doubled or tripled in price in the last 5-10 years.

At the same time your example about bank is good for the one that succeeded. But for every one that succeeded you will find 10 that didn’t. You just wouldn’t hear about those stories much.

So for those 10 that didn’t succeed their investment was very risky and cannot be treated as an asset until it grows and becomes an asset. Until then it’s just a risky investment. Like a lottery. It may pay off well. Or may not.

While a house for someone else might become a real asset if it saves a lot of money. Or makes money if you sublet a part of it (like rent out a basement) while your asset appreciate in price. Even if the house itself (the structure) depreciates while the land appreciates way faster than the house depreciates.

So it’s not always so obvious black and white.

It’s often determined by how the situation unfolds. Easy to know after the fact. Very hard to predict the future.

Although for that - there is risk management. If you make a lot of decisions and manage risk with best statistical approach you might be ahead of the game IF(!) you base your decisions on correct data and process the information evaluating the most powerful contributing factors with more weight than weaker considerations.