[majormajor]

Real estate is the highest-leverage purchase most people can make, so even if you're living in it and plan to sell in the near-ish future, a 5% appreciation will yield you more net cash than a 5% appreciation on the same amount of down payment put into a "regular" investment. The obviously-oversimplified example is something like: put 20K down, buy a 100K place. Sell for 105K, your 20K is now 25K, assuming your mortgage payments were the same as what you would've paid for rent otherwise. Which is a 25% return on your 20K, even on just 5% appreciation.

[rrdharan]

Except transaction costs are a thing (e.g. the closing costs for the purchase, and the commissions on the sale), and often eat up a lot of the gains.

[gowld]

Or in parent's example, more than all of the gains.