[BonesJustice]

You're quite right about desirable urban areas. Example:

The first apartment I rented in midtown Manhattan was a 1BR condo in a fairly new building. The owner had bought it in 2006 for about $775k. In 2010, I looked it up on Zillow to see if I could afford to buy the place (I could not), and it was around $850k. Within a couple years of the crash, it had not only recovered, but appreciated a fair bit.

He sold it in 2014 for $1.2M, and according to Zillow it's now worth nearly $1.5M.

[FabHK]

So, about doubled. Worth nothing that S&P500 also about doubled in that period (and quadrupled since the 2009 bottom), while paying dividends.

[charlesdm]

It's unlikely he purchased that property with cash though. And while you can use margin debt to achieve similar returns, you can't generally get margin called on a mortgage -- which I guess is the one main advantage.