[renewiltord]

It's also the easiest way for most people to achieve high leverage. My friend got a $3000 down home loan in Colorado. $3k in for $450k. The leverage on that is astronomical. A 10% appreciation in value gives him 1500% growth in wealth, with no capital gains tax when realizing.

And you don't get margin called.

[maerF0x0]

If you're going to think of leverage like that, leverage works both ways on expenses though.

150x leverage means 150x cashflow burden from taxation (> 100%!) and also maintenance costs of the property.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35044028 where I laid out how a real estate purchase is really a mix of multiple investments packaged into one sale.