David Swensen, longtime CIO of Yale's Investment Office, has a useful framework in his book Pioneering Portfolio Management.
Real Estate is in between stocks and bonds. the longer the lease and the more creditworthy the tenant, the more bond-like. So a 40 year triple net lease to a Walgreens is very bond like, whereas if you own a motel in the ghetto that rents by the hour, that's about as equity-like as it gets. A lease is a promise to pay x for x period of time and the frequency of having to go win new leases and the variability in operating costs (a triple net lease passes through costs and are generally long, ergo lower variability and more fixed income like, whereas a hotel must get new "leases" every day and does not pass through its costs directly to its customer).
Additionally at the end of the lease, the residual value (value of the property) is variable rather than fixed, adding to the equity like nature of owned RE.
With this framework, I'd say operating single family / multi-family residential more closely resembles running an operating business, and is therefore "equity-like" in terms of risk / reward, broadly.
Of course asset specific factors (location, leverage, condition of the property, operational intensity, etc) will muddle the picture.