The reason why more people prefer a house over the other investment vehicles I described is probably because they feel like they are more familiar with houses (after all, they’ve been living in one their whole life). Another reason might be because everyone keeps telling them the price of homes always goes up and never decreases (which is bullshit, just look at the funk we are in right now) whilst they hear about stock market crashes and day traders going broke. If you want to talk long term, the market has always yielded superior returns than housing on an average basis over a period of decades.

Don’t buy a house for investment purposes if you know how to invest in equity/derivatives or currency. Even with the tax savings it doesn’t make much sense unless you want the house simply because you want a home.

The figures for feeling rich are a little ludicrous, but if you think about it, how much do you really need to buy everything you want whenever you want and live comfortably for the rest of your life? If you need, say 700k/year (number I came up with) to pay for everything you ever wanted then you would need 7mil invested at 10% (general market rate) or 17.5mil invested at 4%(ish - t-bills/bonds) to live that lifestyle. This turns out to be about 58k/month.