20 real estate markets that beat the stock market

One of the most basic investments you can make is the S&P 500. While it varies widely from year to year, the average annual return has been 9.8 percent, historically, a rate of return that’s proven extremely difficult to match elsewhere.

However, there is one investment that’s even more common: owning a home. And, depending on where you live, becoming a landlord might be a better investment than your 401k, based on a new study from GOBankingRates. To determine which housing markets were more lucrative than the S&P 500, GOBankingRates identified 20 of the 125 largest cities in America where every dollar you spend on a place to live grows faster than if you had stashed it in an S&P 500 ETF or index fund.

That’s especially impressive given that in the five-year period considered — March of 2013 to March of 2018 — the S&P 500 grew even faster than usual, gaining 74.28 percent.

Click through see the real estate markets that could be profitable for you.