How good an investment is it after you remove the realtor fees, closing fees, HOA, taxes, repair and compare it to a steady 7% on average on the SP500?
At a minimum your house MUST go up 10% over a couple years to get even.
And that leverage is broadly available to most people, supported (and funded) by government policies.
There's a lot of mortgage features that make it attractive to "I'm not an Accredited Investor" types.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2018/may/why-economist...
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/02/02/w...
https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2010/09/13/dont-defe...
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2015/05/16/a-senseless-su...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-tax-deductions-econ...
If either of those substantially changes, the US budget to inflation link becomes very different, because there won't be external sinks to soak up extra dollars.
Globalization will change on glacial timescales. And the alternatives don't look great: Euro (economic concerns), yen (economic concerns), yuan (economic and political concerns), ruble (economic and political and sanctions concerns), rupee (maybe if SE Asia gets its economic integration in order), naira (would need scale from other major African economies)
Oil being sunset is going to be fascinating macroeconomically, as a huge part of the US' world economic power flows through Saudi Arabia.
All the recurring and one time fees take away from the leverage.
Playing with the buy or rent calculator from the NYT shows you how leverage is an absolute necessity:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal...
Yes, in more ways than one. To juice returns, sure. But the main reason people lever into real estate is because they don't have the cash to buy. So most homebuyers enter into a favorable high-leverage asset whose gains are given preferred tax treatment.
Discussing residential RE as if leverage is optional is not useful.
The only aspect of "investment" should come from proper maintenance of structures, and replacing structures with greater density as soon as the land values justify it.
Home ownership as investment has been a generational disaster
Also probably important to consider that most people who buy homes cannot do so without a mortgage. So you're not even really comparing it to whatever else you might do with that money (well, aside from the down payment); it's just a pure expense. Sure, unless you have an interest-only loan, you're also putting principal into it every month (which you could put in the S&P instead), but that's sometimes better than giving a similar amount to a landlord, depending on housing economics in your area.
For instance, looking at buying a typical home in my market, one would have to pay around $2k in taxes and insurance per month. That's 2/3 of my current rent, and doesn't include maintenance. That's after the mortgage is paid off. That's on a $1.5M house. That $1.5M would earn you $82,500/year in risk free interest right now, or $6,875/mo. That's nearly enough to rent an equivalent house even after you've paid the income taxes.
Unfortunately, making "good investments" is necessary to stay above water in this precarious society, and our society is so fucking heartless that houses are one of the best investments a person can make. It's both bleak and absurd.