I would like to see it as a proportion of overall necessities (e.g., compared to percentage of income for food, healthcare, etc.) and controlled for relevant variables like size.
E.g., if housing in 1960 was 25% of median household income and averaged 1500 sqft and housing in 2024 was 40% and averaged 3000 sqft, that doesn't immediately appear to me that the problem is housing affordability, but rather housing expectations. In other words, a change in preference leads the change in cost. Similarly if housing went up 10% of total income, but food went down 15% of total income, it doesn't necessarily mean the overall situation is less affordable.
The main aspect that's "new" now seems (at a casual glance) to be the amount of student debt being carried now compared to previous generations. Even with that, if you look at real disposable income per capita, it seems to be going up over the last few decades (ignoring the anomalous COVID years).
mmm, yes, housing is unfortunately a subjective matter. consider bungalows built in the 1920s: they are smaller than modern homes, but also contain items such as old-growth timber framing/shelves and hand-built mantles that are essentially unobtainable today
i think you can narrow your focus down considerably to just the post-2000 era, average houses have grown by about 30% since 2000 but housing prices have increased 70%
even more tightly you can look at the post-2008 housing crisis (assuming you feel there was a crisis) and note that the housing/income ratio has almost doubled in a decade, with little change in the housing stock and with interest rates increasing significantly
>you can narrow your focus down considerably to just the post-2000 era
This gets back to my original point. My claim is that most of the post-2000s (or a specific location) is not normal from historical perspective, but we’re treating it like it is. Just because it may be the totality of a person’s/generation’s experience doesn’t mean it defines a good measure of “normal” or even “ideal”. In many ways, housing prices of that era may have even been a lagging indicator of sub-ideal aspects of the economy.
I find nothing to disagree with in that claim, but I do think there is a significant housing bubble that is putting tremendous stress on young people (and young families) in particular. I will admit that involves value claims that I cannot and do not intend to convince you of.
edit: i suppose I should say that I consider most of the 2000s a housing bubble, 2000-2008: the main growth, 2008-2014 the crash, 2014-covid the echo bubble, covid is covid, and now a hyper-bubble. so I agree entirely that the 2000s have never been "normal"
Yeah, I’m not disputing that housing prices are out of whack, my qualm was with the author using SV as an example to show they are 10x their “normal” price of the past. I think there are better, more accurate ways to make the comparison.
