[pepper24]

Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates

I'll try and dig up some numbers, but I've read before that over the last 20-30 years the annual return on RE comes out to about 8-9%. The last 5 years of course are even better, but I'm not just talking 5 years.
Also, it's estimated that something close to 90% of millionaires make their fortunes with significant initial investment in Real Estate.
From personal experience, I know a ton of people who have made great returns in Real Estate, and almost no one who has in stock, so that' effects my opinion as well, although not statistical fact.

But I'm not knocking equities anyway, just stating my preference for Real Estate. I find wealth in equities is heavily based on suckers. Most people are too uneducated on where to put their money and just lose it, while the very few who have a lot of knowledge on it make all the money.
Real Estate offers something more understandable and tangible, and at worst you've at least got a house.

Your preference for real estate is losing you money!

http://www.forbes.com/2005/05/27/cx_sc_0527home.html

Where's a better place to put your money: the stock market or real estate? These days the accepted wisdom (at least at cocktail parties) says to pick real estate. But is the accepted wisdom right?

It is--in the short term. U.S. real estate sale prices increased more than 56% from the beginning of 1999 to the end of 2004, as tracked by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The S&P 500 index dipped nearly 6% during that same period.

But if you take a longer view--say 25 years--you'll find that the S&P 500 has actually stomped the real estate market, from Boston to Detroit to Dallas. From the start of 1980 to the end of 2004, home sale prices increased 247%. A pretty sweet deal, it would seem. Over the same period, however, the S&P 500 shot up more than 1,000%.