Which can be good or bad.
If land prices are increasing faster than inflation it is bad unless they can get out before the bubble pops. Obviously if they bought too high that is a bad investment. Lets ignore this and assume a sane market where values mostly are similar to inflation.
While property increases with inflation are not nearly as good an investment as investments that do better than inflation, it isn't as bad as it sounds. The whole point of buying property in this case is a place to live. So in 30 years you no longer have a rent payment at all, and in between your rent never goes up. This payment situation needs to be factored in to the calculation since you will be living someplace no matter what. (unless you would normally live in a cardboard box) As a result people who invest in property to live in need to invest a much smaller portion of their total portfolio into something else. And since this is a place to live it doesn't matter how well it performs overall since you are not selling (at least not until you go to a nursing home which you can/should insure for).
Let me point out that rent doesn't increase when you own property. So if you invest just the difference between market rent and your rent over the years you will have more money to invest. Now that money doesn't have as long to grow (since it isn't front loaded as much), but owning is still a good part of a long term portfolio.
Note that the above makes some assumptions that may not be true, or that could be true but you don't want to for lifestyle reasons. That is perfectly fine - there is no one size fits all. Every situation is different, you need to make your own decisions as best you can. The first assumption above is you live there for the rest of your life (some amount of trading is allowed, but be careful as each trade is costly), the second is you pay off the dwelling.