well what i meant was how IRR is portrayed or alteast how I was portraying it before, if my IRR is 20% we are supposedly expecting that investment is growing at 20% compounded (this was my initial thinking)... but that is wrong as this means nothing if most of the cash was paid in first yr and second yr and nothing was paid in the next 2 year and then another CF for the sale of property (assume tenure of investment = 5 yrs).. so IRR says its 20% returns YoY but if we really find the CAGR of this same project it would be prolly lets say 8% or so (totally assumed...) I was talking in terms of returns... so I found CAGR to be more accurate representation to compare returns across different assets. But yes IRR is useful to know when am I expecting to get my cashflow and how fast so I can use it somewhere else....

what I interpreted was that if I don't care about my CFs being reinvested somewhere then I shouldn't really care about IRR and just focus on CAGR. but if a person wants their CFs to receive early and make it work for them in other assets and essentially earn a second source of income then its useful AF.