Please don't. Please use the voting buttons for expressing contribution to the discussion, and not agreeing/disagreeing.

And real estate is not that bad an investment in general, if you do not rely on it going up forever. The real problem is its illiquidity.

Look, OP asked for investment advice. I gave my honest answer and what had work for me. If you have constructive criticism, post them instead of whining about downvote.

All investments have up and down. Just because there's an overdue big downturn in real estate, it doesn't mean it isn't a viable investment vehicle. Actually your negative reaction to real estate represents the general public sentiment, which is a perfect contrarian indicator. It really points to now it's the time to look into it to invest.

OP is 25 and has just seen the big housing downturn, which is great for him, lessons learned on other people's expenses. He has the next couple years to learn about it and accumulate capital to get into the game. If he asked couple years ago, I would have advised against it.