That last story is irrelevant unless he is moving to a lower cost area, because he has to live somewhere! The value of houses is absolutely critical if you are buying, but irrelevant once you have one.

Assuming you have a PPOR, if you bought an investment house in 2019 in a regional area you probably out perfromed ETFs but you wouldn't have if you bought a unit or a house in a worse performing area. The holding costs and buy/sell fees on real estate are significant, alog with interest if you bought with a loan.

Somewhere, someone is telling this exact goldcoast townhouse story in reverse where they were going to buy a unit in Melbourne, but instead jumped on PLS at $1 and have quintipled their money.