He invested to make a long term profit and he may not have sold at 400K$ while he was having costs to maintain the house. He has no cost to hold BTC.
Unless he was living in that house(and even that ) I don't think the annual cost of maintaining a house would be that much a factor(depending on the condition of that house and where it's at), he could always rent it to offset that and made some money in the meantime.
In order to make an actual investment comparison we need to also know the potential profit from keeping the house (though rents e.g) and t how much the property value have changed since then.Do we have any of that info?What we know is the current price of bitcoin and from that we know that he have lost money.
He made a big bet on Bitcoin, he says it was hard to sell the house for fiat. It is a bit weird that it is easier to sell in Bitcoin than in fiat.
You can collect some informations here :
http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2013/03/alberta-man-accepting-bitcoins-in-exchange-for-home.html
If the house was sold in March 2013 he would have made 4000-8000BTC or if he sold the 400K home for 300k$ then bought BTC he would have got 3000-6000BTC instead of the 600ish he got
If the house was all his net worth he should have considered "only" investing 50% in BTC and 50% in other assets but you have to respect the commitment and hope it will pay back well!
