I've invested in real estate, though never lived in a home I owned. But in the late '90s and early 2000s in Latvia you could throw a dart blindfolded at the real estate market dart board and make money. Capital got paid for just showing up.

Buy real estate now? Why would I go through all the operational friction of owning directly instead of owning REITs I can get into or out of in 3 clicks? https://www.fool.com/research/reits-vs-stocks/

Lower beta, lower correlation to the index and long term alpha of 2.5% over a half century (a reasonable sample set).

Throw in selling cash-supported put options to juice dividend yields of 4-8% up to 12-20% depending on the market's perception of the stock's risk (implied volatility). And I get more diversification than a direct owner will ever have: multiple geographies to reduce macro risk (USA, Canada, UK, EU, a Mexico bet on reshoring), industrial warehouses, residential, experiential/entertainment, life sciences buildings, medical office buildings, casinos, hotels, mortgage REITs, farmland and many more types.

Why would I buy into the headaches of buy to let when I can buy BYG (Big Yellow Group) as a bet on the growth of self-storage in the UK?

From a decade's experience I call direct investment in real estate "investment rugby". You get pounded hard and down in the dirt...to advance 3-5 yards....unless you go in with the kind of macro tailwind we had in the Baltics in 1998-2007.