It's been my personal experience that when discussing purchases with educated property buyers, many have bought astutely and have enjoyed capital growth and rental yields better than any average equity investor could hope for.
Whilst Australians involvement in share ownership is rapidly increasing, it's important to note that this figure is still well below the number who have invested in property (home ownership alone is currently hovering steadily around 70%).
To ensure a fair comparison, the merits of shares versus property would be more realistically assessed if analysts deducted all those involved in property purely for home ownership and looked at those buying specifically for investment. An even better appraisal of these relative merits could be made if there was a deletion of those who purchased property with the lifestyle factors in mind and confined the figures purely to those interested solely in yield or capital growth.
Of course with the gains posted by worldwide bull markets recently, very few properties have equalled or surpassed those returns.