Zillow suggests the growth in home values in about half of the United States’ largest cities is higher than working a full-time minimum wage job:

The typical U.S. home appreciated 7.6 percent over the past year, from a median value of $195,400 in February 2017 to $210,200 at the end of February 2018. That $14,800 bump in value translates to a gain in home equity of $7.09 for every hour the typical U.S. homeowner was at the office last year (assuming a standard 40-hour work week),[1] a shade less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

Overall, owners of the median-valued home in 24 of the nation’s 50 largest cities earned more in equity per hour over the past year than their local minimum wage.[2] But homeowners in a handful of U.S. cities made out a lot better than that – in some cases much, much better.

The median U.S. household earned roughly $60,000 in 2017 ($58,978 to be exact),[3] or a little more than $28 per hour. But in six U.S. cities – New York, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle and Oakland – owners of the median-valued local home gained more than that in home equity alone. And if earning a six-figure annual salary represents a certain amount of privilege, homeowners in San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle all made comfortably more than that simply by virtue of owning a local home…

A home is often a person’s biggest financial investment, and according to the 2017 Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report, the typical American homeowner has 40 percent of their wealth tied up in their home. A recent Zillow survey found that 70 percent of Americans[4] view their home as a positive long-term investment.

This is both an interesting and weird comparison. For the interesting part: most people understand the abstract idea of working a minimum wage job. They should know that a full year of work at that rate does not generate much money. The reader is supposed to be surprised that simply owning a home could be a more profitable activity than working.

But, there are a number of weird features of this comparison. Here are four:

First, not all that many Americans work full-time minimum wage jobs. People understand the idea but tend to overestimate how many people work just for minimum wage.

Second, roughly half the cities on this list did not experience such an increase in housing values. Without comparisons over time, it is hard to know whether this information about 24 out of 50 cities is noteworthy or not.

Third, the comparison hints that a homeowner could choose to not work and instead reap the benefits of their home’s value. This question is posed in the first paragraph: “Why work a 9-5 slog, when you can sit back and collect substantial hourly home equity “earnings” instead?” Oddly, after the data is presented, there is a disclaimer section at the end where the difference between working a job and earning money through selling a home is explained.

Fourth, to purchase a home, particularly in the hottest markets cited, someone has to start with a good amount of capital. In other words, the people who would be working full-time minimum wage jobs for a full year are not likely to be the ones who would benefit from the growth in their home’s equity. It takes a certain amount of wealth to even own a home and then even more if someone wanted to profit from just owning homes.

Overall, I would give Zillow some credit for trying to compare the growth in home values to a known entity (a minimum wage job) but the comparison falls apart pretty quickly when one gets past the headline.