A Bloomberg op-ed published this week makes a provocative argument: houses are no longer the best place for your money. I’m not here to defend housing. I’m here to defend fact and data over narrative — and in this case, the analysis doesn’t hold up. 

I promise I’m not here to pick apart another publication’s article — but I’m here to say I disagree with core components of the argument. And I feel the obligation to share the knowledge I’ve gained through years and years of leading HousingWire. 

Let’s start with math. The author compares a $500,000 Nantucket home purchased in 1995 to $500,000 invested in the S&P 500. But very few people buy a primary home with cash. The relevant comparison is what happens to your down payment. 

Twenty percent down in 1995 is $100,000. That same $100,000 in the S&P 500 with dividends reinvested grows to roughly $2.5 million by 2025. That’s a real return worth acknowledging. 

The Nantucket home, meanwhile, went from $500,000 to approximately $4 million. The $100,000 down payment became $4.0 million in equity — a 40x return. But we know that there were principal and interest payments, which assuming a blended average rate of 7%, resulted in $958,000 in P&I paid over 30 years. We could factor in taxes and insurance, but let’s call that a (really cheap) rent equivalent and ignore for these purposes. The Nantucket homeowner’s $100,000 downpayment would turn into over $3.0 million over 30 years after paying P&I on the mortgage. The person is paying for shelter one way or another, so if we were to net out real rent, the argument gets even stronger.

Real estate wins on her own example, and it isn’t particularly close. 

Then there’s the benchmark problem. The median home value in Nantucket today is nearly $4 million. Using Nantucket to make a broader point about whether Americans should buy homes is like using Amazon stock to argue everyone should invest in equities. Technically defensible. Practically useless.

But the deeper issue is the framing itself.

A home is not an investment vehicle competing with the S&P 500. It’s shelter — one of a few options, alongside renting or living with family or friends or strangers (I guess). People choose ownership because they value stability, privacy and the ability to build a life without asking permission from a landlord. Those things don’t appear in a return calculation, and they shouldn’t have to.

The real question isn’t whether a house beats the stock market. It’s what kind of life someone is trying to build. Renting is a legitimate choice with real advantages depending on the season of life. But that’s not the comparison the article set up. The frame was shelter versus stocks, and on that question the analysis starts from a broken foundation.

The author may go on to make observations worth considering about shifting cultural priorities and how younger generations think about ownership. That conversation is worth having. Homeownership may be harder to access today for aspiring first-time homebuyers than it was in 1995. Surveys may show that young people don’t think housing is a good investment (a belief furthered by sloppy frames). The American Dream may be less clear today than it was for generations that came before us. But when the opening argument rests on bad math and a misleading benchmark, everything that follows is on unstable ground.

What concerns me most is the consumer impact. The person who reads this piece and decides not to buy based on a poorly constructed narrative. The downstream effects on financial stability and community that follow from that decision. Housing professionals have an obligation to stand for what we know to be true — not to win an argument, but because the stakes are real.

Shelter matters. Community matters. And the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage remains one of the most powerful wealth-building instruments available to ordinary Americans. That story deserves better than a Nantucket comp and a broken benchmark. 

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