alt Hacker News> You'd have to invest the savings and get way higher than inflation returns to break even.
You say that like it's a difficult thing to do.
S&P500 is up 710% since 1996. Gold is up 92% since 2012.
Personally, the rent control is the best part of a mortgage and even though renting is typically better, I'm fine paying a premium for that. That said, good luck getting somebody to loan you 900k so you can play the stock market; it's much easier to get that for a house though.
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> Gold is up 92% since 2012.
And housing is up 125% since 2012, so the sucker who bought gold instead of a house has lost out.
We can all be rich in hindsight.
(There's also other benefits to owning - like being able to have pets, not being able to be evicted, etc)
But the biggest tell that housing is valuable is that nobody is spending $500k on housing to rent it out if they could make more money pumping $500k into the stock market.
If you put around 200-300k into IBKR (not affiliated) you can get portfolio margin which will give you just shy of $2,000,000 in buying power. Access to leverage isn’t really an issue, but forced liquidation definitely is. The bank will not liquidate your mortgage if you end up underwater.