As it happens, I'm an officer of a family business that has a number of real estate investments (some residential, some commercial, some industrial). We've had

As it happens, I'm an officer of a family business that has a number of real estate investments (some residential, some commercial, some industrial). We've had the properties over a timeframe of decades -- in some cases like 10-20 years, in other cases 30-40. We're now selling them. Some of them have been basically good investments. Others have been iffy. You do of course accrue rents from them, but there are also costs. There is no law of nature that they outperform other investments.