The growth in residential real estate investment internationally since 2008 has led to an explosion of research on residential investment, across economics, sociology, housing and urban studies, geography and planning. But there remains an underlying question of what exactly is meant when we talk about ‘residential investment’. This paper analyses the way that ‘residential investment’ is used as an analytical category within different theoretical approaches to mean slightly different things, with different implications for policymakers. Further to this, we show how these different conceptualisations of investment are related to one another, in the case of the UK. The paper uses empirical material drawn from archive research on the development of the UK housing system to reflect on the vast literature on financing, financialising and investing in residential real estate. This paper makes two key contributions. Theoretically, it clarifies and questions the conceptual divisions created between different forms of residential investment. Methodologically, we demonstrate the benefits of a historical approach, which we argue reveals the path dependent nature of residential investment processes and practices.