63%! I think I win! (or lose?)
That's for a small, quite modest town house on a tiny lot. (German property taxes are based on the size of the lot rather than the value of the property, and I'm not much for yard-work anyway.)
Reasons:
a) We are still quite young and in the earlier stages of accumulation.
b) The housing market here is crazy.
c) We used a significant chunk of our assets for a large down payment, since we wanted a more manageable mortgage, and a lower rate.
Fun fact: The percentage was
lower when we bought the house 3.5 years ago. The dumb thing appreciates quicker than I can save! OK, we also attacked the mortgage agressively and made some renovations/improvements. Once the house will be paid off and we come closer to 30%, I'd say we are FI. Should we ever make it below 10%, we'd be positively rich!
Some of these percentages are very high, which means the hard asset component of that asset distribution is kind of locked into that high spot. Not that that's 'bad', just that I wonder if there are folks in that position that are ignoring their personal residence when it comes to setting and maintaining their asset allocation.
I thought about investing in a REIT a while back, but decided against it. Main reason was that I feel we have more than enough exposure to real estate. OTOH, it might still make sense to branch out into other regions/countries and/or commercial RE...