[cpitman]

Certainly isn't returns. Over the last 10 years, housing in the US has appreciated on average 39%, or 3.4% annually (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA). Over the exact same time period, the S&P 500 with reinvested dividends has gone up ~323%. or 15.5% annually (https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/).

To avoid cherry-picking, if we go out to 20 years housing has an average annual return of 4%, and the S&P 500 is at 6%. Go out 30 years and housing hits 5% while the S&P is at 10%.

PS, I really appreciate the Case-Schiller index used above for housing prices. It's methodology specifically targets the change in value of a house, instead of capturing overall price increases caused by house flipping, the expanding size of houses over time, etc.

[zzzzzzzza]

I think that looking at avg house appreciation is probably not a very good way to measure things, since there are large swaths of empty land and then a few hot spots. What's the average return of urban real estate? The average return of urban real estate by state? Now those numbers, would probably be interesting.

[cpitman]

There are separate Case-Shiller Indexes for 20 large metro areas, as well as composite indexes for the 10 or 20 largest metro areas.

For the 10 largest metro areas (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPCS10RSA), the annual returns are the following. Interesting to note that nationally home values are over their 2006 peak values, but that in the 10 largest metro areas home values are only about even with the previous peak.

  10 Years: 3.8%
  20 Years: 4.7%
  30 Years: 3.6%

Alternatively, if you look at just San Francisco (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA):

  10 Years: 7.8%
  20 Years: 5.7%
  30 Years: 4.8%

[paxys]

Are you factoring in saved rents and tax deductions in the housing number?