It sounds from your other thread that you're a recent immigrant from Brazil, so at least you're familiar with the country and speak the language. Real estate and stock buying (especially index buying like you're considering) can be very different. Real estate tends to be very hands-on, and DIY is very rewarded. So you might be your own handyman - fixing doorknobs, window screens, and anything else you're comfortable fixing. You might collect your own rent, check on the units, and be the tenant's point of contact. You might also be your own project manager if you're fixing up a place. Collecting bids for plumbing, electrical, and carpentry work, and scheduling all of them around each other. As a distant landlord, you won't be in a position to DIY many, if any of these tasks. Instead, you'll have to hire trusted people to do all of this in your place. And you'll have to trust what they relay back to you.
In order to compare what you might make in real estate vs. what you might make with VTSAX you'll need to consider currency effects. The dollar is a strong currency that tends to inflate less than South American currencies. In 2006 a US dollar bought 2.15 Brazilian Reals, and as you stated is 4.75 Reals today. That means you're rent checks would have brought you 2.2x less US dollars today than in 2006. You'll be able to raise rent from year to year, and you should do that. But the amount you can raise rent will be guided more by the local Brazilian economy than the US to Real conversion rate. This is to say, you'll likely be able to adjust rent by the local inflation rate to keep up with what other landlords are charging, but that increase could very well far short of the rate of change in the currencies.
In the US there are lots of benefits to real estate investing:
Access to mortgages - 30 year, fixed rate mortgages beat any type of borrowing you can do for the stock market.
Appreciation - houses have tended to gain value over the years
Tax treatment - You depreciate the value of the house (minus the land) over 27.5 years. This becomes a non-cash expense on your taxes, and can reduce your income taxes on non-rental income too.
Cash Flow - If you've chosen a good property, it should bring in rent above the mortgage, repairs, and other expenses. That's yours to keep and because of the above depreciation, usually without tax.
How does foreign real estate compare? I don't know. My taxes were complicated enough with a rental property, W2 income and some side income. I wouldn't want to add foreign real estate investments to it also. Not just for the US side, but for the Brazilian side too.
Can we assume you've already set aside a nice emergency fund? I can imagine if your residency situation is not nailed down, you could have a sudden need for international tickets and a need to sell things you own in the US fairly quickly.
