In response to an opinion piece that ran in The Wall Street Journal (“A Home is a Lousy Investment,” July 11, 2011), NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun wrote a letter to the editor defending houses as a financial investment. Yun cited the author’s own hypothetical, in which a California resident buys a home in 1980 for $99,550 with a 20 percent down payment of $19,910. According to Yun, this buyer would see that investment grow to $296,820 when the home was fully paid off in 2010. “Investing the same $19,910 in the Dow-Jones Industrial Index in 1980 would result in a balance of just over $238,000 in 2010 and be subject to taxes on the investment gains along the way,” Yun wrote. He also pointed out that the Federal Reserve’s 2009 Survey of Consumer Finances showed that the median net worth of the typical home owner exceeds $190,000 but is less than $4,000 for the typical renter.