Real Estate vs. Stocks. Which One Wins the Game?
2025 Playbook for Founders, How Efficient Equities Beat Bricks on Every Line of the Return
Why This Matters Right Now 🚀
The 2025 filing season is the first lived-in year of Secure 2.0’s bigger retirement buckets and the Inflation Reduction Act’s revamped IRS enforcement budgets. If you’re a high-growth entrepreneur, you suddenly have:
More contribution room (Solo 401(k) limits just jumped again).
Tightened audit algorithms targeting Schedule E real-estate losses.
A capital-markets backdrop where the S&P 500 sits near all-time highs while mortgage costs still hover above 6 %.
Against that backdrop, every post-tax basis point counts. The core question isn’t “Which asset appreciates faster?” but “Which asset lets me keep more of the appreciation with the least friction?” This article dissects both pathways—bricks and equities—line by line in the 2025 Internal Revenue Code so you can deploy cash where it compounds the fastest.
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The 30-Year Scoreboard: Raw vs. After-Tax Returns
*Federal only; ignores state & local
**Computed from index 80.0 → 324.9, Feb-1995 to Feb-2025
Before taxes, stocks already lead by ~6 ppt. Layer in property-tax drag, ordinary-income rent, and depreciation recapture, and equities sprint ahead by 7 – 8 ppt per year.