to make the sell side work, its a hassle. people overcome the hassle, because the need the money. and in turn, the sell to people like you who want to lose the hassle by not owning.
So, the sell side is long hassle-factor. The buy side is short hassle factor. One side has cash, and one side needs it. If the allocation in the last sentence was reversed, there would be a busted market. But since it's not--presto the market works.
Its a worthwhile bit of understanding. And its generally true in other eras. EG many large victorian homes in SF were too expensive to be single family homes, so they became flats in the 20th century. Same deal--the house is too valuable to carry as a single-use asset, so sub-divide it and capitalize to other peopel who didn't want the "hassle" of a massively expensive house. Basicaly the upkeep became a problem when servants became too expensive.
That kind of thing--ie, a form of economic infeasibility--is what people are facing. Then, as now, even in higher price points. And thus you see decent listings for nightly and weekedn rentals in good neighborhoods where rents have shot up and people who could have afforede a private space now have "temp roomates" or what not a couple times a month to net a couple hundred dollars.
If you could build the Transporter from Star Trek, the entire real estate industry would gather en masse to have you and the invention erased such that you never existed.
For me, I don't want "to own a house with a lawn". I want "a convenient piece of grass to throw a football around, sit outside and eat lunch, and walk my dog". I don't want "to own a car" - rather, I want "A few times a month, access to a vehicle within a few blocks of my apartment for a few hours".
I think we're saying the same thing here, but the "sharing economy", is, more than anything else, about using communication technology to create finer grained matching between supply and demand - about matching access to goods with people who want to use them, about providing an opportunity to turn time into money and money into time to the extent that one needs and desires.
the concept of the timeshare vacation rental is closer to reality of what you speak about. shared leases, mortgages, etc etc.
a startup that divides the credit potential of multiple people into a mortgage would be a real sharing, and be able to purchase into it for a time period.
i know i need to raise a family and need a 3 bedroom house for X time. Can I effectively purchase someones mortgage for 18 years at a premium on the base apr?
Sharing in the sense of TFA, for money, is not the same.
The basic idea of property is that you decide a resource is your property, then you mark it in such a way that other people see your claim. Territorial animals do this, and it works. Not perfectly (no human system is perfect either), but they work.
The evolution part is how society comes to recognize territory markers, and which claims it respect and which it rejects. For an animal, the signal could be pheromones. If another animal smells a marker, they will tend to avoid that territory, because they know the "owner" will fight to the death if necessary, and the territory itself is worth less than the risk of taking the fight. But presumably, if an animal goes rogue and marks a huge area as its territory, there is a limit to what that animal society will respect. And of course, if resources get tight, things will break down into violence (just like in human society).