Amen to that.
Many amateurs (and this forum is mostly amateurs) investing in real estate simply don't know how to calculate CAGR and look at their overall % gain as if that is describing the whole picture.
If you bought a property for 100k and 10 years later it's 300k, you think you've done a great investment and probably can't wait to tell all your friends about what an investment genius you are for picking a great property in a great market.
Well, in CAGR terms it's only 11.61% per annum and you would have been better off just buying an ETF (SPY returned 12.35% last decade) and you would have made more money with less headache. And this is NOT including stamp fee, fixes, issues, potential legal and regulation changes. Not to mention that most properties did not triple in value in the last decade, in some markets property even went down. If you bought in Dubai in 2007-2008 you are still -50% underwater. And not including the illiquidity of it, exposure to a single market and a single area and countless other risks.
Of course people that are already invested in real estate are immensly biased and will keep extolling real estate as if it's going up non stop, but a closer look reveals a more accurate picture.