Someone buying a $1.5m condo only has to put up $300k for the mortgage, so it's not correct to say that the alternative is to just put $1.5m into the stock mark

Someone buying a $1.5m condo only has to put up $300k for the mortgage, so it's not correct to say that the alternative is to just put $1.5m into the stock market: the buyer often doesn't have that much. Also, it's more precise to use the S&P dividend yield (2%) or 10-year Treasury yield (2.4%) to gauge how much someone with $1.5m could spend in rent, assuming they put all their interest into rent. They'd be renting something at more like $3k/month. Now take the fact that home prices are, at the higher end, about 25x the yearly rent of the same place. So this person with $1.5m is essentially renting a place worth $900k, whereas the buyer (who perhaps only has $500k) is living in a nicer place that cost $1.5m. And that's not considering the fact that rents could rise further. There are taxes and maintenance to consider, the risk of putting a lot of money into a volatile asset, and being tied to one place. Financial leverage in general is risky. But it's not a clear-cut decision like most people try to make it.