[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by Laker14

Here is a typical example:

4362 Watch Hill St, The Villages, FL 32163 | Trulia

note, this is from an actual sale, not a listing. This is what the house sold for, as opposed to
asking price.

in July 2017 it sold for 294,700
in May 2023, it sold for 462,000
Take 6% for the realtor (correct me if that's wrong), and you have a gain of around 140K, over 6 years.

Carrying costs I'd estimate at around 12K/ year assuming no mortgage, so that 140K gets chopped down by 72K (again I'm doing this on a napkin, I didn't include bond payments ), so now we're looking at about 68K "profit" on a 6 year 294K investment, which is about 23% over 6 years, which is more like 3% to 3.5% return /year on the original investment.

Meanwhile that money was not in the stock market.

So, it's not the "no brainer" people sometimes like to make it out to be.

Don't forget to pay income tax on the $140K capital gain, unless it was your primary residence for 2 years of the past 5 years.