Housing prices over time

Author: Ashley

9 Mar

I know this chart is hard to read, but I felt I had to share it. I saw it about a week ago and haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.

The chart is an index of American housing prices going back to 1890. It is based on sale prices of standard exisiting homes, not new construction. It shows housing prices in today’s money.

The second shaded area is the Great Depression. The fourth and fifth shaded areas are the booms during the 70’s and 80’s respectively. The last shaded area is the current boom. Wow. Check that out!

The important thing to notice is that after each boom, or depression, the average standard house price returns to levels that have been consistent since the 1950s. The dotted line is an estimation of future housing prices. The last year listed on the bottom is 2013. So according to the chart housing prices won’t reach bottom until about 2017.

Gulp!

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Filed under: recession

4 Responses for "Housing prices over time"

Sarah March 9th, 2009 at 7:33 am 1
One thing which also helped drive up the cost of homes is that they are now much larger. I think it would be a more telling graph to look at the cost per square foot of house, and see how that looks.
Bill March 9th, 2009 at 3:16 pm 2
That is from a 2006 article, you can see where someone tacked on some more years and created the down marks. It shows over a 40% drop, only a couple of the hardest hit areas have seen anything like that.
Rebecca March 9th, 2009 at 11:21 pm 3
Thanks for sharing this. It’s really interesting although I am hoping that future estimates aren’t completely accurate. It’s scary to consider the possibility of another eight years of plunging house prices.
Miss M @ M is for Money March 11th, 2009 at 7:45 am 4
Ouch, another 8 years till bottom would be really hard, I know people who bought 7 years ago who are almost underwater. Prices in some part of So Cal have fallen more than 40% already.