Any suggestions on a good, *unbiased* real estate vs. stock market comparison?

[Jeremy Hale]

I'm currently in my mid-20s, and I'm trying to set a course for my future to stick on. I've long held an interest in real estate investing, but I'm unsure if it really fairs as comparably as many seem to suggest as my current investments are.

I've had the bulk of my money in an online "robo investor" company for the past few years. Over these years, I've averaged a bit over 9% yearly return (it was a hair over 10% until last month, which really hurt it). I do absolutely *nothing* to earn this 9% - each money I automatically deposit $2,000 into my account and this company automatically disperses it around my targeted funds. That's it. I ride the highs and lows and don't worry about much of anything.

For a while I was set on flipping homes. Not as a 'get rich quick' scheme, but because I genuinely enjoyed the process of taking a rundown home and making it something sale-able. I was into this for a few months before I finally came to the conclusion that real estate flipping is too competitive around here to do it casually - I was going to have to invest a lot of time and money into finding houses to purchase, and it seemed a little too much for someone of my limited knowledge in the area.

This, then, leads me to my second interest in holding rental property. I'm having a hard time finding repeatable, trustworthy information on expected returns, but I'm seeing a lot of 8-11% suggestions on returns doing this. Like I said earlier, I'm averaging 9% returns right now doing *nothing*. Even if I could manage to earn 11% returns, I'm not sure the hassle of dealing with renters and owning a home is worth 2% above what I'm already getting. Please, BP, tell me what I'm missing because I know you guys aren't going through the hassles and nightmares of real estate when you could be making similar gains in the stock market.