Depends.

The old thinking was that owning residential property was your best performing investment, but large amounts of Wall Street capital with nothing better to do has spiralled housing costs out of control, so good if you got in early, not so good now.

Unless you're in a specific market that seems to push constantly upwards with flavor-of-the-year capital flows like AI/crypto/social media/databases such as San Francisco, but money flows so freely, that there's always the risk that the big money could move out of town and never come back.

So how do you reduce risk? Diversification.

The S&P 500 is diversified, both in terms of different industries, and internationally.

But large capital (American) stocks are only one sector of investment and may not actually be that diverse: There are also small and middle sized companies, corporate and tax free bonds.

(and American investments may be subject to high risk from a tyrannical government that doesn't respect laws and precedent)

A solitary residential house as an investment is a very specific market: Real estate value and rental income in a very specific location.

I would treat buying a house like buying milk: Buy it only when you need it.

If the house is in a community that you have solid plans to move into eventually, and you want the rent to help with the payment, and the means to pay the mortgage off quickly that's fine.

If you want to buy it as an investment, forget it: There are entities out there who will outbid you and have already inflated the market leaving you with no return; Natural disasters, leaks, fires, and bad renters who will destroy the structure without warning; As others have said, you need to spend your own valuable attention, time and money into maintaining the property.