Saying you want real estate to not be treated like an investment is a pipe dream. It is the most expensive purchase most people will ever make - looking at it without a financial lense is a terrible idea!

Fortunately, what you want has a straightforward solution, and requires few if any economics phds. Because an economist already solved the problem a long time ago. Henry George noted that landlords provided a valuable service to people by building and maintaining housing - but that the value of the land that their building was built on (which made up the bulk of the reason people were willing to pay their rent) was made by the community. A 300 sqft studio in Boston rents for more than a 2000sqft house in bumfuck Nebraska because it is in Boston. The public infrastructure, the businesses, the other peoples homes, the parks, the universities - all these things contribute to the value of that studio in a way the landlord had nothing to do with.

The land itself has value depending on where it is, and we should not let landlords capture this value. Instead, it should be returned to the community, which is the source of the value in the first place. Hence, George proposed issueing a tax on land values, such that landlords would be unable to profit on the value of land itself. Instead, they would be required to earn value from the land by building and maintaining something of worth on it. And when something of worth is built, this improves the community further!

I highly recommend looking into Georgism.