To be even more proper, you'd need to allow the stock market investor to use leverage, just like the guy with the mortgage does.

Or, if you want to avoid the mortgage/leverage complication, we can compare someone buying a house outright with someone investing the same amount in stocks, and uses the returns to pay rent.

> Around here, houses appreciate in value. Quite significantly, actually. A house can gain 100k in value in just a few years.

Total returns on eg the S&P500 over the last few decades have been pretty good, too. And it's a much more diversified and liquid investment than a single house in a single location.

For some people in some places, buying a house might be better than buying stocks, for some others it might be worse. Results also depend on taxes and jurisdiction and personal preferences. But it's not automatic that buying a house is better than renting.

"Households living in poverty are spending a significantly larger proportion of their net income on housing costs than households not living in poverty. This is true both in London and in the rest of England.

London households in poverty are estimated, on average, to spend 54% of their total net income on housing costs. In comparison, those living in households which are not in poverty spend just 11% on average.

The trend is similar in the rest of England with households in poverty spending 32% of their income on housing compared to 8% for those not in poverty"

(a lot of that is numerator/denominator issues - of course if you have more income you're spending a lesser fraction on housing - but it does show just how dominant housing costs are in people's lives)

Wha a world that would be. More in the 35-45 range.