It’s time for some more BRUTAL HONESTY.  You think that “buy and hold” real estate is a good bet… that home values usually grow over time.  Well, my friends:  Somebody – EVERYBODY – lied to you.  U.S. housing is, generally speaking, a LOSING PROPOSITION as a buy-and-hold investment, and I’ve got the data to prove it.  I’m Bryan Ellis.  Get ready for the shocking truth RIGHT NOW in Episode #119.-------Hello, hello, hello SDI Nation!  What a great day to be alive, and thank you for spending the next 7 minutes with me again today.As my thanks for your attention, how about I just go ahead and BLOW YOUR MIND?Here goes:  There’s a long-standing believe that the odds are on your side if you buy real estate and just hold it.  Alas, my friends:  It’s just not true… and I’ve got the HARD EVIDENCE to prove it.Before I do that, let’s establish some context.  In the last episode of this show, we began to analyze the notion of buying rental properties in the context of the S3 Investing Criteria of SIMPLE, SAFE and STRONG.  I gave you some pointers on determining whether rental property ownership is, as a concept and in terms of implementation, sufficiently SIMPLE to be worthy of your portfolio dollars.  Remember, complexity hides risk, and so SIMPLICITY is a key component for every wise investment.One other thing we discussed on the last episode, which really comes into sharper focus today, is the reality that not all rental properties are the same.  If someone is trying to sell you a rental property, you should ALWAYS seek out additional options for comparison – maybe even in entirely different markets and with entirely different providers – because rental property is NOT a commodity.  One deal is NOT the same as the next.  Folks, it’s very realistic that two separate deals could look really good to you, but one will lead to profit and the other will lead to financial ruin.  How do you know the difference?  Well, start with what you learned on yesterday’s episode, and then pay attention to this, too:SAFETY is the 2nd leg of the Simple-Safe-Strong trifecta of investment excellence, and nothing is more fundamental to the question of safety than having a strong reason to believe that your property will increase in value over time.  In fact, equity appreciation is frequently the very biggest part of the payoff for owning rental property at all.That’s why it’s so easy for slick salespeople to mislead you about the likelihood that your property will be worth more in the future.  They’re relying on the same thing that everybody else relies upon:  The assumed knowledge that housing values go up over time.My friends, it just isn’t true… as much as I wish it was.  And this isn’t my opinion.  Here’s the data:For a recent 45-year-period, the average home price in America – whether new or existing – DID increase at a rate of 5.4% annually.  That’s the statistic that makes it so easy to claim that home prices increase.But that’s incredibly deceptive, because in that time period, the SIZE of the average house went from under 1,000 square feet to over 2,300 square feet, so it stands to reason that average home prices went up during that time as well, and they did.So average home price is the wrong metric.  What’s a better metric?  Average price per square foot.  That’s where the real story is told.And when we look at THAT metric, the National Association of Realtors tells us that existing homes prices increased by 3.7% per year.So what’s the problem?Well, PRICES are increasing, but VALUE is actually DECLINING.  That’s because those figures do not factor in the most silent killer of wealth:  INFLATION.I’m not going to bore you to tears with inflation rates or statistics, so here’s what I’ll tell you to make it clear:  In 1992, an average square foot of housing was worth 76 loaves of bread.  By 2010 – 18 years later – that same square foot could only buy about 60 loaves of bread.So… while your net worth would have increased rather nicely in that time frame,