The index-fund rebuttal
Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA, 2009: the year the spreadsheet people were right.
Take the same $60,000 in 2009. Route one: 20% down on a $300,000 Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA house, thirty-year loan at that year’s real rate. Route two: the S&P 500, dividends reinvested, no tenants, no roof.
Route one is worth about $269,286 of equity today. Route two is worth about $450,165. The leverage that makes house regret spectacular in Austin and San Francisco cuts the other way in the metros and years where prices went sideways — you paid interest for the privilege of standing still.
We built this site around house regret. This page exists so nobody can say we hid the years the other argument won. The calculator prints the S&P line on every metro, every year.
Check 2009 Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA yourself
Figures are index-derived estimates for the metro market — not an appraisal of any specific house. FHFA data; this site is neither endorsed nor certified by FHFA. Not financial advice.