They seem to be net worth in the lower race threads and start to become investment assets once above about a million or so. Probably because if you're trying to get to $100k and are paying into the equity of a house, that equity is so much of your net worth that it's the only thing keeping NW from being negative. When you're at a couple million dollars, the house could blow up and you'd still be in 2 commas.
As the "ring leader" (not my term) of the $2-$3M race thread, I defined it clearly as investment assets:
As with the "2" thread, I'm counting investable assets. Not house, not rental property, not cars, not silver coins. Too easy to cheat with stuff that needs to be valued, in my humble opinion.
When you get right down to it, if a goal number gets you to save and invest more, just use what YOU feel is best. This is especially true for those who do less market investment and instead put money into rental properties. Heck....without property value, Donald Trump has a net worth of what? $12.53?
I'm the last guy to say to not put money into your house, just to be able to say your investable assets are above $xxxx. I know there's a split of people saying pay your mortgage off/don't pay your mortgage off. I was a "pay your mortgage off" guy and my net worth was almost all my house for many years. I would never want to sway someone away from doing that if that's what they felt was best for them.