Dive Brief:

• Economist Robert Shiller's longtime study of housing price data in the United States tells him that homes are not good investments.
• Looking at the data from 1890 to 1990, Shiller found that a house had a rate of return of about zero.
• The economist, who won a share of the Nobel Prize in his field this week, says that people tend to repeat mistakes they make in markets, though he does not expect the notion of housing as an investment to return with the strength it had before the collapse in the previous decade.

Dive Insight:

Shiller has nothing against owning houses as places to live that owners can control and charge as they like. He says, however, that for someone just looking for a way to invest their money to make it grow, renting makes more sense than buying a house does.