Here are my main three resaons for investing in property-

1.  SECURITY-  Property does not go bankrupt or crash in value overnight as some stock market companies can.  If a house burns down then insurance covers the loss.  Even if the house was not insured you would still have the land which is the part that eventually rises in value anyway. 

2.  LEVERAGE-  Basically you can use someone elses money to buy a property (a lending institution) and someone elses money to pay it back (tenant and the taxman).  It is possible to use $0 of your own money or at least a small deposit to buy a property which can return hundreds of thousands of dollars in 7 to 10 years.  With the right strategies this can be done over and over again.

3.  GROWTH- Property in most major towns has demonstrated that on average it DOUBLES IN VALUE every 10 years. So if you buy a $200,000 property with a 10% deposit ($20,000) and it is the sort of deal where the tenant and the taxman cover just the interest payments on the loan, you should be able to sell the property in 10 years for about $400,000, pay off the $180,000 debt and pocket about $200,000 (after costs).  It's like me saying to you "Give me $20,000 dollars now and  I'll give you $200,000 in 10 years from now".  This is a very simplified explanation but the point is that it can be done and has been done by many investors and sometimes in much less than ten years.