Real Estate Blog

We're getting down to that time of year when people start taking stock of what they've been doing. Eating too much. Definitely. Not working out enough. Yep. All that stuff is standard stock and trade for resolutions on the New Year. But I have some really good news for real estate investors that will take you through the holidays guilt free, content you're on the right course.

What you're doing? It's worth more than gold. No. Seriously. In the long term, real estate investing has fared better than Gold, that shiny stuff that has long been thought the best of the best when it comes to putting your money somewhere.

Let's look at the charts below. If you sunk some investment dollars into gold in January 1980, setting aside all transactions costs and holding fees, it looks like you picked up a 95.5% gain. However, once you adjust for inflation, you're down 30%. That's right. Gold couldn't even keep up with the rate of inflation over the past three decades.

Now, let's say you picked up a little median-priced existing home back in 1980. You would have gained, in the same time period, 252%. No. I didn't drag my fingers on the number keys. 252% is what I meant to type.

Some other benefits? Well, you can't live in an ingot of gold. You can live in a house. You can deduct your mortgage interest. And the first $250,000 of gain for an individual ($500,000 for couples) is tax free. Even with housing values down 23% since 2006, you're still ahead.

So go forth. Eat. Drink. Be merry during the holidays. You're in the right line of investing and given everything we've been talking about over the past few weeks, it's only going to get better in coming months.