People are bad at math
(From Kevin Drum) Houses are not a good investment:
People are bad at adjusting for inflation. If you bought a $20,000 house in 1947 and sold it in 1997 for $150,000, that seems like a tidy profit. In fact, it’s zero profit. Adjusted for inflation those numbers are identical. But despite all the complaining we do about inflation, most people don’t realize just how much it adds up to over the years. (It’s that pesky compounding problem again.)
