Maybe from a USA perspective, but back here in Australia investing in our share market has beaten investing in world share markets in our currency, as shown in that ASX report, and achieving an 8.3% post tax return has been barely achievable.
The report looks at a 10 year period, where stocks had the biggest dip in generations, and it still beat 8.3%. If this worst case scenario was able to do it, I don't think this qualifies as "barely achievable".
past housing returns should count as equally as past share market returns
This shows a gross misunderstanding of the fundamentals of economics. Using past returns to predict future results, especially
on a commodity, simply makes no sense. The
recency bias is evident. We don't expect stocks and bonds to appreciate because of past returns, we expect them to appreciate, because of things like population growth, productivity, and production. Your house doesn't do any of that. It does not grow and multiply. It cannot compound on itself. Let's look at the long term housing chart again, this time stopping at the year 2000:
I'd caution not to ignore the black line. This represents
at least 80 years where the value of your home would be steadily declining. Definitely not where you'd want the majority of your net worth to be.
Now let's look at the green line. Had you bought in 1950, and held
50 years, you would have seen less than a 1% real return yearly on the value of your home. Had you bought in 1953, it'd be about a 1.5% real yearly return. During this span of 50 years, the first
two decades would have seen a large drop, then a break even. 0 appreciation. Starting in 1970, you would have seen 0 appreciation for
18 years. Starting in 1988, you would have seen 0 appreciation for
10 years.
This is what we expect from a commodity. The only reason anyone here is even debating this, is because of this part of the graph:
This is speculation, not investing.