Fans of Bravo’s Real Housewives of Miami may recognize Nepola as the ex-husband of Alexia Nepola, one of the housewives on the show, but professionally, Todd is the owner and founder of the commercial real estate firm Current Capital Group.
In the TikTok video, Nepola argued that one reason so many people mistakenly see homes as good investments is because they haven’t lived through a downturn. He cautioned viewers, saying, “Homes don’t always go up in price. The problem is most people who are 40 years old and younger have never seen a bad real estate market. I’ve lived through them.”
Given his expertise, if Nepola were to invest $100,000 today, it’s not surprising that he would choose to invest in commercial property. According to Nepola’s playbook, “Learn the game, fix it up, keep it going. Then, eventually, you can refinance and pull some cash out of that and go buy another.”
Is buying a home really a stupid investment?
If you pull up a chart of the median U.S. home price, it certainly looks like a decent long-term strategy. Between Q1 2000 and Q1 2026, this average price rose from $165,300 to $408,500, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In percentage terms, that’s roughly a 147% gain.
Although these numbers seem great, they don’t tell the whole story. After all, homeowners have to factor in mortgage rates, taxes, insurance and maintenance fees over the years. Plus, homes are illiquid by nature. Unlike an S&P 500 index, you can’t realize gains in your home without going through a lot of paperwork, finding a buyer and making sure you have another shelter squared away.
Speaking of the S&P 500, holding a standard ETF like the SPY would have rewarded investors with a superior 395% gain in the same 2000 to 2026 timeframe, not including dividends.
Recent data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) also shows U.S. house prices increased by only 1.7% year over year through the first quarter of 2026. As with all things in real estate, your location will impact just how much (if any) profit you see year by year. Eight states, as well as the District of Columbia, actually had house price declines in the FHFA’s latest data.
Then there’s the time factor. In today’s economic climate, Zillow estimates it’ll take 8.5 years for a household to have the funds for a 20% down payment on a standard single-family house, if they’re consistently saving 10% of the median income. Understandably, that has pushed up the median age for a first-time homebuyer to 40, according to the National Association of Realtors.
But even after hitting this milestone and getting a mortgage, Zillow shows new homeowners won’t be in a better financial place than renters until 6.2 years after purchasing the home. And that’s just the national average.
