Or just put those 100k into a margin trading account with 1:10 leverage in a "west coast real estate index". No commissions, no agents, no property taxes, no leaking roofs.
Regular people do not get 1:10 leverage in a margin account. Furthermore if you lever yourself up to 10x with options or exotic ETFs or whatever, and the market goes down by 10%, you don't have any money left. If you put 10% down on a house and the value goes down by 10%, you still have a house to live in even if you don't have any equity. You can choose to just sit and wait for the market to recover. There's no recovery from getting margin-called on your 10x leveraged account.
Still doesn't offer that tax advantage (either in capital gains or the numerous deductions). And if you have to live somewhere like the parent comment, this doesn't help you.
You will have a commission in the expense ratio indefinitely.
But yes, definitely a decent option if you want to put your money in real estate with less headache.
The tax advantage is up to comical 250k that will be promptly eaten away by brokerage fees, transfer fees and other god knows what fees, on top of all the house maintanence costs over those years.
Those who have a million or two but a house not because it's good for financials, but because they can't stand cranny rentals. Those with bare minimum money jump into a mortgage because for them it's the only efficient financial instrument available (a margin trading account essentially). If they tried to open such an account with a brokerage, they would be told no after looking at their net worth.
I'd rather pay capital gains tax on a 250k stock appreciation, than have my house appreciate by the same amount. It's just ordinary people don't have brokerage accounts that can appreciate by so much.
As a slight diversion, this thread danced around a pretty interesting point in my eyes - why are ordinary people denied access to brokerage accounts with advantageous rates - it's not likely that the money actions will be nearly as dynamic or require nearly as much oversight as folks with a lot of money and the minimum investment bars seem unreasonably high before you start dodging the heavy fees. Isn't that system just furthering wealth inequality?
