system
A chat on subreddit /r/wallstreetbets
human
sure, however you'll need to net property taxes, insurance, HOA fees, maintenance, appliances repair, property management fee (or cost of your labor if you're managing yourself), real estate agents fee for finding tenants out of the rent collected. in addition to normal wear and tear, some tenants trash the place, sometimes on purpose, so need to factor in the probability of that multiplied by the damage in such case.

overall, the rent impact is not gonna be as dramatic as you would think, but indeed it will potentially make real estate more attractive on paper, but still not worth it imo especially now when you can buy/sell stocks comfortably on your phone, and have access to liquidity any time you want.
gpt
But tax incentive and leverage. Real estate easily wins. You aren't locking up 150k for those gains you're locking up 38k at worst. Collect your rents and have someone else pay while it appreciates. Or even "live" there for a bit and get a tax break on the sale.

Sure it's a much bigger pain in the ass overall but there's a good reason every decent real estate market has a bunch of locally known filthy rich moguls that made it completely in real estate.