In 2009, any SFHs bought in South Bay for $1M, should be able to fetch $2.6M now. In terms of…
AAPLs, from 56,593 shares to 11,945 shares so house price dropped to 20% 
of 2009
AMZNs, from 11,042 shares to 1,609 shares so house price dropped to 14.6% 
of 2009
GOOGs, from 4,050 shares to 2,230 shares so house price dropped to 55% 
of 2009
In conclusion, house prices have been deflationary.
Should rent instead of buy?
From financial perspective, yes. For FAANGs + other good hi-tech stocks, selling RSUs to buy Primary is not good. Should rent. Copy wuqijun’s model of borrowing against stocks to buy rentals, buy Primary if ownership is so important to you. Going forward, we both agree that the same thing would happen right? For those stocks, stock appreciation is faster than RE appreciation.
Hard to escape the emotional draw of owning your own home. Even though I am a femisnt 
I still feel the urge to provide a home for family. Somehow “renting” doesn’t have the right ring to it.
Sorry to say, In this, I want to stand on your opposite site or skeptical side.
FAANG is good now, after the fact, but who will know, in 2008, AAPL or AMZN will reach 1 Trillion by now? Even WB quoted, he missed buying GOOGL and AMZN as he or similar experts does not know ahead of the game.
Simple example happened to many friends during years 2000 dot.com burst.
Example: Two of my friends $5M and 2.5M worth shares of dot.com companies, bought the home with mortgage, not selling their RSU, ESPPs.
When dot.com burst, stocks dived down over night, they did not like to sell, dived down further and further and they lost entire amount.
Believe it or not, both are paying mortgage even today. I still remember they regretted, many times, holding the shares.
Those companies were well regarded companies like FAANG of dot.com, now no more. One was $112 billion during year 2000 and another was 6.5 Billion during year 2000 pre-crash peak market cap.
What do you say about this? Who knows about the future?
The company I quoted above was Sun Micro-systems (112 Billions) and I2 Technologies (6.5Billions) at year 2000 time level, both were spiked heavily.
Company surviving downturns is as risky as job loss for individuals.
Both you and WQJ are the luckiest people escaping the downturns.
That is the main reason, I am always skeptical above stock market, the fall is steep and unbearable while fine with real estate as the volatility is low.
I trust TEVA or AAPL alone as this bought by WB, assuming he has done enough research that they won’t go to that stage in case of downturn.
Only need to know that they would be appreciating faster than house prices.
Presumably you would be staying around where you work 
Get the relationship?
Referring to rock solid stocks that you’ve done DD on, not a few months of reading blogs/ articles from MF/ Alpha/ BIs,…
Shouldn’t quote WB on tech stocks. He bought AAPL because is so easy to understand, one table is enough to display all Apple products.
Dot.com is also not a good example, most (may be all) stocks then are overvalued - everybody know that. Recall their P/E ratios are very high, hundreds to negative 
Recall the dotcom mood then, euphoria to the point of recklessness, caution is thrown out of the windows. We’re nowhere close to hitting that kind of mood.
P/E (fwd) at today’s close,
AAPL 15.90
AMZN 74.78 (pretty high for a good reason)
NFLX 82.46 (may be exclude this one)
GOOG 24.30
FB 19.54
Not to add salt to injury, your friends have no concept of intrinsic value and hence no concept of margin of safety. Then I recalled many companies were acquiring other businesses using their overly inflated shares. This is a clear sign that many stocks are over-valued if you don’t know how to compute valuation. At present, don’t have that many M&As- may be I am not following the market closely. Are there many M&A recently or in 2018 so far?
Remember the axioms from … forgot the name of the books or is it from WB?
Undervalued - buyback shares
Overvalued - M&A
I unloaded SUN before it crashed. Was excessively overvalued, I told you over the lunch at Mandarin Gourmet, recall?
Well, I realize you’re right. SWEs & tech employees should sell RSUs to buy Primary. I forgot that most of them most likely don’t know much about investment.
I didn’t escape the downturns. I rode through them, survived because of fiscal conservative e.g. no margins, even houses are bought with high downpayment.
There you are ! Selling SUN, holding AAPL through downturns!
No wonder why you rode through recessions!
Since you are an outsider, you understand SUN was over priced.
But, being insiders, they saw their stock fly through $2 to $120 that made them think that company may soon recover…
Just want to debate to come to a better conclusion. This I see risky idea, even though WQJ took that risk.
How?
Say, I have 3000 TSLA shares (I do not really own that much!) which is around $900k, borrow margin 450k and buying a condo. The rate of interest is 3.5% (IBKR) which may vary as short term rate increases.
When downturn occurs, TSLA goes down to $125 (I see many forum members are happy except me and WQJ !!!), stock will be sold automatically and I will be asked to pay additional amount or collateral.
Will it happen? Yes, it happened to my friends during year 2000 (same friends) as they pledged their stocks to get mortgage (they had two loans, one primary and another secondary/collateral stock).
Stock crashed from $120/share to $45, triggered stock sale. He was forced to sell additional stock to pay the cash. It also trigger capital gain next year when he was in deep loan.
I wanted to have safety, and I do not borrow on stock margin.
Does that include mortgage?
Irrelevant.
I guess potato meant leverage thru mortgage?
yup, that’s what i meant.
Not relevant for above illustration
OH yeah, it is relavant. As with any investment, cheap access to capital might make one investment better than the other.
Then include it and see what is the outcome. Was merely using shares instead of currency as yardstick. 1 inch is 1 inch. 1 foot is 1 foot. Mortgage is totally irrelevant, not talking about funding.
The house in 2009 is worth 56k AAPLs.
The same house now is worth 12k AAPLs.
Very lazy. I take your word.
Clever analysis, hanera!!!
Your analysis has heavy after-the-fact 20/20 bias though. Why pick the most successful companies? Choose something less spectacular and houses won’t look that bad. How about use Yahoo as yardstick?
The point is to look from the perspective of those guys.
You can use YHOO or other stocks to look from the lens of these guys 
From these guys’ perspective, hyperinflation 