You’ve heard this before: Stocks, over time, outperform real estate.

There are many schools of thought on this but one common statistic that gets tossed around shows equities over the past several decades have returned an average upwards of 10% a year, while real estate is in the 4% ballpark.

Ask anybody who managed to nab property in red-hot markets in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles or New York in recent years, and they’ll likely scoff. So might the guy who keeps getting caught wrong-footed trying to time his moves into the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.61%  and the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.82%

Obviously, there are a lot of moving parts to this argument, but when deciding how to allocate your cash, it’s not all about the prospective returns.

Sam Dogen of the Financial Samurai blog, a longtime proponent of the real-estate side of the discussion, recently made a move to unload his rental property and add to his equity holdings, even though, as he says, “stocks give me zero pleasure.”

Then why did he do it?

Dogen, who just last month wrote about how “real estate will always be more desirable than stocks,” flipped the script this week and listed several ways, in addition to the lure of better profits, that stocks are the better choice.

1. Much more liquidity

You want out of a stock? Press a button. You want out of real estate? “I tried unsuccessfully to sell one property in 2012,” Dogen wrote. “It took a stressful 45 days to finally sell the same property in 2017. With stocks, it’s so nice to be able to simply click a couple buttons and be done.”

2. Lower transaction costs

You can trade stocks for less than $5 a transaction online. Real estate still has those ridiculous commissions as high as 6%. “You would think with the growth of companies like Zillow Z,  2.60%  and Redfin RDFN, -1.29%  transaction costs would significantly decline,” Dogen said. “But unfortunately they’ve done very little to help lower expenses for the consumer.

He used this example to illustrate the costs:





You’ve heard this before: Stocks, over time, outperform real estate.

There are many schools of thought on this but one common statistic that gets tossed around shows equities over the past several decades have returned an average upwards of 10% a year, while real estate is in the 4% ballpark.

Ask anybody who managed to nab property in red-hot markets in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles or New York in recent years, and they’ll likely scoff. So might the guy who keeps getting caught wrong-footed trying to time his moves into the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.61%  and the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.82%

Obviously, there are a lot of moving parts to this argument, but when deciding how to allocate your cash, it’s not all about the prospective returns.

Sam Dogen of the Financial Samurai blog, a longtime proponent of the real-estate side of the discussion, recently made a move to unload his rental property and add to his equity holdings, even though, as he says, “stocks give me zero pleasure.”

Then why did he do it?

Dogen, who just last month wrote about how “real estate will always be more desirable than stocks,” flipped the script this week and listed several ways, in addition to the lure of better profits, that stocks are the better choice.

1. Much more liquidity

You want out of a stock? Press a button. You want out of real estate? “I tried unsuccessfully to sell one property in 2012,” Dogen wrote. “It took a stressful 45 days to finally sell the same property in 2017. With stocks, it’s so nice to be able to simply click a couple buttons and be done.”

2. Lower transaction costs

You can trade stocks for less than $5 a transaction online. Real estate still has those ridiculous commissions as high as 6%. “You would think with the growth of companies like Zillow Z,  2.60%  and Redfin RDFN, -1.29%  transaction costs would significantly decline,” Dogen said. “But unfortunately they’ve done very little to help lower expenses for the consumer.

He used this example to illustrate the costs:

3. Less work

Real estate can keep you busy with maintenance, disputes with neighbors, finding tenants, etc. Stocks can be tucked away and left to collect dividends so that “you’re able to focus your attention elsewhere such as spending time with family, your business, or traveling the world,” Dogen said.

4. More diversification

“Unless you are super rich, you can’t own properties in Honolulu, San Francisco, Rio, Amsterdam and all the other great cities of the world,” Dogen explained. “With stocks you can not only invest in different countries, you can also invest in various sectors.”

5. Ability to invest in products you love

Dogen pointed to this is as one of the “fun aspects” of the stock market. Apple AAPL,  1.81%  fan? Buy the stock. Got an appetite for McDonald’s MCD,  5.77%  cheeseburgers? Buy the stock. “It’s a great feeling to not only use the products you invest in,” he said, “but make money off your investments as well.” His personal wins on that front: Buying Netflix NFLX,  0.22%  in 2011 and Amazon AMZN, -0.41%  in 2016.

6. Easier to protect your investment in a downturn

When the going gets ugly, you can easily sell or short a stock. But when the bottom falls out of the real-estate market, “there will be no reasonable offers as vultures will start swarming,” Dogen said. He added that shorting home builders XHB, -2.01%  or other plays can offer real-estate hedges, but taking that approach is inefficient.

7. Fewer taxes and fees

Property taxes typically run 0.5% to 2.5% of the value each year. Then there are the costs related to maintenance, insurance, property management, etc. “With stocks, you can build a portfolio of ETFs for free on Fidelity,” Dogen points out. “Or you can have a digital wealth adviser build and maintain your investment portfolio for just 0.25% a year.”

For Dogen, who retired at the age of 34 after a career in investment banking, it may ultimately come down to where you’re at in life.

“Real estate is a younger person’s asset class. I had all the energy in the world in my 20s and 30s to buy and manage real estate,” he wrote. “Now that I’m in my 40s and have a wife and son to take care of, I simply do not have enough time or desire to manage real estate. A simple life is a happier life!”

Source

Well, though i'm not an expert in finance, i am an Igbo man. 
So, I agree, and disagree with this series of advise.

Though you can short a stock in a downturn, it may not give you enough time to react (change position).
Stock downturns come like jokes, and then BAM! the bottom falls off and can lose more than 50% in one fell swoop.
Same can happen to real estate, but real estate down turns follow stock moves.
And real estates ALWAYS recover with time. Some company stocks become junk overnight and the company might even file for bankruptcy.
So, yes, stock are highly flexible (liquid), but who says liquidity is the cornerstone of wealth accumulation?
The way I see it, the more illiquid an asset, the harder it is to get rid of, which means the more likely it would hang around and accumulate over time.
The opposite applies to liquid assets.
If I want liquid assets, I would choose CASH (or something very close to it). 

I partially Agree in term of buying And selling  of stocks it very easy
unlike real estate  where you start looking for Agent to buy and the longtime bidding
their many strings  attached  to  stocks in terms of economic calendars, Gdp  new product and companies  turn over
if may fall rise crash

unlike real estate which does not depreciate  in value easily