After President Trump refused to rule out a recession on Sunday, the stock market’s dramatic free fall on Monday showed how unpredictable relying on Wall Street can be when planning your financial future.
Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News, “There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. What I have to do is build a strong country. You can’t really watch the stock market.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 890 points the following day, down 2.1%. The S&P 500 fell 2.7%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4%, its largest decline since 2022, and into correction territory. All the major indexes fell below their Election Day levels.
In light of the stock market’s recent roller coaster ride, real estate remains a rock-solid investment if you prefer drama to be on the stage and big screen, not in your asset portfolio. Even Warren Buffett, who has mastered the art of picking the right stocks, admitted after the 2008 financial crash: “If I had a way of buying a couple hundred thousand single-family homes and had a way of managing them … I would load up on them. I would take mortgages out at very, very low rates.”
The Draw of Real Estate
Widening the lens, if the stock market is such an up-and-down investment, why do so many people invest in it?
Real estate is rarely passive, especially when starting out, leveraging, and building a residential property portfolio. Tenants, repairs, and turnover, now against the backdrop of higher interest rates and soaring insurance costs, put it out of the comfort zone for most investors with busy lives. However, not being hands-on—as with stocks—does have a downside.
“When you hit retirement, you do not need a lump sum in an IRA or 401(k),” Grant Cardone told GoBankingRates last year. “What you need when you retire at 65 or 68 years old is income to take care of your expenses. I would look for vehicles that, when you retire, are going to pay you money every month.”
Cardone expounded: “When I was 30 years old, I started looking for the asset class where I couldn’t lose money. That means I can’t just save money because money is going down in value. I can’t be in the stock market because I could lose money.”
Given that real estate produces passive income, appreciates over time, and offers tax write-offs, Cardone rightly points out: “There’s only one asset class that does all that. It’s not gold, silver, Bitcoin, or the stock market—it’s real estate.”
The Case for Stocks
There are many recent instances where the case for the stock market has been extremely compelling, outstripping anything real estate has been able to match. Over the past five years, innovative GPU maker Nvidia, responsible for facilitating the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, has seen its share price rocket—with a 2,000+% increase over the last five years!
However, even Nvidia employees likely had no idea their company would become so successful. Being able to predict that kind of explosive growth is rare—otherwise, we would have all invested.
Even if you didn’t buy Nvidia stocks or those of other tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, or Microsoft and put your money in real estate-related stocks, such as various well-performing REITs, Home Depot, and Bankrate’s picks—Champion Homes and Builders FirstSource—the stock market would have done well for you. Crucially for investors, it would have been without the hassle of dealing with rental properties.
To Cardone’s point, however, for the average investor without a nuanced understanding of analyzing a company’s performance portfolio as a master investor like Warren Buffett can, the stock market does seem a bit like a fairer casino, but still a casino. You assume you’ll be dealt a decent hand but never truly sure. While real estate certainly has its risks, it’s not as pronounced and grants you more control. Issues can be mitigated, such as removing bad tenants, performing repairs, and investing in the right areas.
When you factor in the benefits of appreciation, leverage, cash flow, and depreciation, real estate becomes appealing for investors who don’t mind a less passive approach than the stock market.
A Tough Spring
Traditionally, one of the key advantages of owning real estate over stocks has been potential cash flow. In a high-interest rate environment like ours, it’s been hard to make a case for this. This means that, in the short term, unless you buy your real estate for all cash or with a large down payment, you won’t be cash flowing.
Coupled with high home prices, it’s unlikely that this spring will see a thaw; in that respect, you will be buying real estate for the same reason most people buy stocks: for long-term wealth accumulation. Over time, the stock market and real estate have consistently risen. The advantage of real estate is that even in a challenging market, the tax benefits make owning a portfolio that pays for itself worthwhile.
“While our National Index continues to trend above inflation, we are a few years removed from peak home price appreciation of 18.9% observed in 2021 and are seeing below-trend growth over the history of the index,” Brian D. Luke, chartered financial analyst, head of commodities, real and digital assets at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told Forbes.
Current Real Estate Investors Are in a Good Position
For investors who currently own real estate, the difficult buying conditions will only increase demand for rental properties, meaning you won’t have a problem finding tenants to pay market rents. Also, the general lack of housing inventory means home prices are likely to keep increasing.
“I don’t expect to see a meaningful increase in the supply of existing homes for sale until mortgage rates are back down in the low-5% range,” Rick Sharga, founder and CEO of CJ Patrick Company, a market intelligence and business advisory firm, told Forbes.
“More often, it seems the case that home prices generally keep rising, so the goalposts for amassing a down payment keep moving, and there’s no guarantee that tomorrow’s conditions will be all that much better in the aggregate than today’s,” Keith Gumbinger, vice president at online mortgage company HSH.com, said in the same article.
Meanwhile, the stock market’s volatility this week has sent fearful investors straight towards bonds. The 10-year Treasury yield has fallen to 4.3%, down from 4.5% at the end of February and 4.8% in January. This matters a whole lot to real estate investors, as 30-year mortgage rates are typically tied to the T-bill’s yield. As a result, we’ve already seen some mortgage rate relief—rates fell to 6.8% as of Wednesday, down from 7.1% just a few weeks ago.
Whether the downward pressure on T-bill yields continues is up in the air, as the latest CPI report seemed to calm investors somewhat, ending the stock market’s tailspin.
Final Thoughts
In an ideal portfolio, stocks and real estate work hand-in-hand. I know people who have done phenomenally well by owning tech stocks (Nvidia in particular), then sold some of their stocks and purchased real estate, which they have paid off quickly as share prices continued to rise, creating a stress-free real estate investment scenario.
But to a tech and Wall Street outsider such as myself, pulling off this remarkable feat seems a bit like threading a needle in a hurricane. Like many real estate investors, I was drawn to the asset class because I understand it, and I know I won’t wake up as many stockholders did on Monday morning to see their wealth had fallen off a cliff thanks to a few inopportune words during a TV interview.
Investing is what you make it, and while I recognize I may not be maximizing my wealth, I sure as heck am protecting it.
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