The main reason that property can be utilised more effectively than shares as an investment, is due to the added benefit of being able to highly leverage an investment property.
Leveraging is where you use a small portion of your own money along with a large portion of someone else’s money (a bank loan) to secure an investment of a far greater value than you could have, using only you own money.
If you invested $10,000 directly into shares that were growing at 10%, then in 7.2 years they would be worth around $20,000. On the other hand if you had used that $10,000.00 as 5% deposit on a $200,000.00 property and borrowed the remaining 95% plus establishment costs. If this also grew at 10% then in 7.2 years your investment would be worth $400,000.00. Meaning that by leveraging your investment you have gained an additional $190,000.00. Compounding has an even greater power, the longer it is allowed to work. With the above example, if you were looking at a 21.6 year period, then the results are quite staggering.