Is gold your best performing asset for the next five years? Is it high growth technology stocks? Energy stocks? Or maybe biotech shares?

How about French collectable postage stamps or vintage racing cars?

Nope, you’re not even close. I’ll give you a hint: you’re probably sitting in it.

Yes, the best performing investment you will own for the next five years will most likely be the home you live in.

Psshaww you may say. Perhaps even balderdash! However, if you look at the crucial data that drives this long ignored sector, my conclusions are unassailable.

If fact, you can pretty much count on your home to appreciate at a 3%-4% annual rate until well into the next decade, and more if you are fortunate enough to live on the red hot west coast.

Net out the copious tax breaks that come with home ownership, and your take home will be even higher than that.

This beats the daylights out of stocks (SPY) (2.2% yield), ten-year Treasury bonds (TLT) (1.78%) and approaches junk bonds (HYG) (6.61%) in terms of the potential returns.

For a start, the Federal Reserve’s go slow policy on interest rate rises is hugely pro housing.

The conventional 30 year fixed home mortgage can now be had for a bargain 3.5%. And many finance their properties with the 5/1 ARM’s that I have been recommending which are currently going for only 2.75%.

Worried about what happens in five years when the interest rate is reset? Just refinance during the next recession, which will almost certainly happen before then, and you’ll probably get a lower rate than you can get now.

That is, assuming you still have a job.

Any hopes that rates will rise sooner were sorely dashed by the April nonfarm payroll report of 160,000 announced on Friday.

The good news for those homeowners who rely on the floating rates of an adjustable rate mortgage is that this is not a low interest rate decade, but a low interest rate century.

Another positive is weekly jobless claims of 246,000 at 40 years low, and a decade low unemployment rate of 5.0%, meaning that a lot more people have the income with which to purchase homes, far more than only a couple of years ago.