This article is extremely confusing. It's comparing stocks, a purely financial instrument, with a personal home that you live in and calling that "flipping hous

This article is extremely confusing. It's comparing stocks, a purely financial instrument, with a personal home that you live in and calling that "flipping houses." It's just all over the place and very surprising it's coming from such a mainstream publication. People mainly buy the houses they live in in order to have a place to live, full stop. Investment properties are a completely different concept and most Americans aren't involved in real estate investing whereas most Americans are involved in buying personal homes. It also totally makes sense people who are very unfamiliar with financial instruments (like young people) don't have any idea about what sort of return they have. Everyone's familiar with houses though - TFA says 2/3rds of Americans own their house. Like, duh, you aren't going to make money just buying a house to live in - If I sold my house at a big profit because the housing market overall increased I'd still have to live somewhere so my "profit" would just go into the increased cost of my new house and I'd be out closing fees and agent fees on both ends. I think a house you buy to live in is a bad investment and I own much more stocks than I have equity in my house. I've put thousands into my house in the last several months especially and it only seems to be getting more and more expensive every year I own it. I'm thinking I might have to reduce my monthly savings for the first time ever. However, I have to live somewhere and I like the security of owning my house and I like that I can customize it and nobody tells me I can't have cats. I have the money to pay extra for that. It's not an investment though, at least not a financial one.