Most all of them bought houses leveraged and with inflation and 10-20% down, being paid off by renters, they have millions in property. My neighbor lives in Eu

Most all of them bought houses leveraged and with inflation and 10-20% down, being paid off by renters, they have millions in property. My neighbor lives in Europe most the year, just comes back a few times to check on houses. Has 2 homes in Europe too. That money was built by judiciously buying and maintaining the properties over ~4 decades while trying to minimize costs. This was as a self funded real estate agent. Not someone born with money. There's a healthy mix of people I've known that have built almost all their net worth in real estate. In fact, most my programming friends that bought after the .com bust in SF and the great recession in 2008-2010 have more than doubled their single home investments.