<prompt> Human: I read about this often, but cannot understand how to compare the apples-to-apples financial benefits of home-ownership versus other investments. Basically, can you help me wrap my head around the point where leverage can overcome both the higher gains elsewhere and all of the costs like of debttaxeseverything else? Heres an example if it helps:Person A invests 100K in a small basket of stocks and sells it 10 years later for 200K boughtsold through discount website, so costs are basically nothing.Person B buys a home for 100K with 10 down and sells it 10 years later. At what selling price would this outperform Person As investment when you factor in the typical major expenses of owning a home?Please feel free to use whatever averages possible to keep it simple: annual home maintenance costs, property tax rates, RE tax deduction amount based on average income, mortgage rates, ...sorry, this is the point where I lose track and get overwhelmed with all of the numbers and calculations!Thank you.  <response>: To answer your question, you really have to run all the numbers for your specific situation. Averages broad enough to make this simple are going to be so broad as to be meaningless for decision-making purposes.The very long-term return on housing is basically just inflation. In fact some economists think that IS the rate of inflation. I know houses seem like an investment right now due to to the run up in prices since 2012, but remember when the prices crashed 5037; a decade ago? I think its better to treat housing as consumption more than investment. 