Americans pick real estate over stocks—why

Americans pick – A new Gallup snapshot shows that even as stocks have dramatically outperformed housing over decades, Americans keep naming real estate as their “best” long-term investment. The results track shifting fears during downturns and a deep comfort with homeownership

For nearly two decades, Gallup has asked Americans a simple question with a complicated answer: what’s the best long-term investment?

In the latest round, real estate won again—by a wide margin. In a 2026 poll that offered six options, 38% of respondents picked real estate. Stocks and mutual funds landed in second at 20%. Gold took 18%, while savings accounts and CDs were next at 12%. Bonds and cryptocurrency finished far behind, with bonds at 4% and cryptocurrency at 2%.

The numbers show something that doesn’t line up neatly with Wall Street’s usual pitch. Financial experts routinely point to equities for long-term gains. and Fidelity has reported that the S&P 500 delivered an average return of 11.5% per year over the 40 years through 2025. Yet when Gallup asks Americans to name the “best long-term investment,” stocks never come out on top in its results.

Real estate has also been remarkably durable as the public favorite. Gallup has asked essentially the same question every year since 2007, and real estate has led the survey every year since 2013.

But the story doesn’t look the same in every chapter of the last few decades. In 2008, as the Great Recession descended, Americans chose savings accounts—along with certificates of deposit—as their favorite long-term investment. Neither stocks nor homes looked like safe harbors in that moment. The S&P 500 lost nearly 40% of its value in 2008, as the housing market collapsed.

“During the Great Recession, nothing was performing well, and that’s why savings accounts won,” said Matt Frankel, a certified financial planner at The Motley Fool.

By 2011, Gallup added gold as an option. Gold won the “best investment” contest in that year and again in 2012.

Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar, said the pattern points to something deeper than a lack of knowledge—it’s about experience. Investors, she said, did not have a good run in stocks between 2007 and 2009.

“Investors had a very poor experience in stocks in the 2007 to 2009 period,” Benz said. “It’s difficult to like stocks, at times.”

More recently, experts say the Gallup results reflect a shift toward homes as the investment people can more easily picture—and hold in their minds as steady. Compared with stocks, real estate can feel calmer, even if it isn’t immune to declines.

Home prices dropped during the Great Recession, but experts describe that fall as an anomaly rather than the norm. Over the past several decades, home prices have mostly trended higher.

“Real estate has historically gone up almost every year,” Frankel said. “There are very few times in history when real estate has gone backwards.”

Still, comfort with “safer” investments doesn’t automatically make them the best deal for long-term wealth. Stocks have, in fact, grown far faster than homes over long windows. Motley Fool analysis has shown stock prices rising at four times the pace of home prices over the past 30 years. Investopedia editor in chief Caleb Silver went further, calling stocks the clear winner.

“The best long-term investment, without question, is the stock market,” Silver said.

Investopedia also offers another comparison: from 1992 and 2024, the S&P yielded an average return of 10.4% a year, while home prices grew by about 5.5% annually.

Benz said it’s surprising that stocks aren’t a more consistent favorite in Gallup’s survey.

“It’s surprising to me that stocks aren’t a more consistent favorite” in the Gallup poll, Benz said. “Because, based on the data, stocks beat all these other asset classes hands-down.”

One practical reason real estate keeps winning is straightforward: more Americans own homes than they own stocks.

Roughly two-thirds of American households own their primary residence, according to the Federal Survey of Consumer Finances from 2022, the most recent edition mentioned here. By contrast, only 21% of households own “directly held” stocks, meaning shares in their own name.

Real estate also lands as the investment many people feel they understand. Frankel described it that way.

“Real estate is the investment that the most survey respondents understand,” Frankel said.

For many households, a home can start functioning like a savings vehicle. When people buy with a mortgage, they enter a yearslong cycle of building equity through monthly payments while the home’s value gradually changes with the market.

Homeownership, Silver said, has helped millions of Americans pursue the “American dream,” and it’s also what makes real estate feel durable—especially to generations that have watched stocks crash.

“Older generations traditionally feel like gold and real estate are better investments than the stock market, because they have lived through stock market crashes and watched their wealth evaporate,” Silver said.

Gold’s spot in the public ranking hints at that same “seen it before” mindset. Lately, gold has looked compelling. In early 2026, the price of gold was up roughly 75% over one year and 200% over five years, and it was outperforming stocks at one point.

But experts caution that the recent run may not be a reliable guide to the next decade. The price has since shed some value, and the recent rise is described as atypical.

Adjusted for inflation, gold was worth about as much in late 2024 as it was in early 1980.

So is gold the best long-term investment? Experts here say probably not. Benz said it tends to fit better as a small piece of a diversified portfolio.

“A little bit of gold can actually help diversify. So, it’s worth looking at,” Benz said. “But I think investors should avoid these either/or scenarios.”

Savings accounts and CDs can also look comforting during uncertain times, but the same caution applies: they’re best suited to limited risk tolerance, or for investors using them to hedge against stock volatility.

Many of the best high-yield savings accounts and CDs carry annual interest rates around 4%. That means the money in them will “just about keep pace” with the current annual inflation rate of 4.2%.

Put together, the survey result tells a human story as much as a financial one: when people feel burned by stocks, they reach for assets they can visualize, own more often, and treat as steadier—sometimes even when the longer-term math points elsewhere.

Gallup poll real estate stocks S&P 500 homeownership gold savings accounts CDs Morningstar Fidelity Investopedia