Just look at the chart on page 20 of this Fed paper (the Fed was created on 1913, the fiat dollar became the global reserve currency in the 70s after years of debasement to pay for the cold war, vietnam, etc.)
Perhaps the better chart is on page 21 (Figure 16), where as compared to all the other countries surveyed the U.S. is at the far low end of housing price inflation. In fact, unless I'm missing something it comes in dead last among all 14 countries at the end of the sample period, 2012.
The US as a whole has low housing prices. But that is including all the homes in Nebraska and other places most HN readers don't want to live in. The home prices in the ~10 cities people on HN actually want to live in are much higher and not affordable for most people. And the good jobs are only in the expensive places, unless you're a doctor or something like that.
See section 4.3 Urban and rural prices move together. Urban prices may be unaffordable, but the data suggests they haven't inflated faster than rural. Perhaps urban/rural is too coarse a distinction to reflect the effects in major coastal cities, but the return to coastal cities didn't begin until the 1990s. Price inflation indeed accelerates in the 1990s in the U.S., but excepting Japan[1] it accelerates in all the other countries even faster; likewise for the 2000s.
[1] Presumably still reeling from its 1980s property crash.
See my reply to jeffreyrogers: WWII reconstruction can't explain the 1990s and 2000s, which are far removed from that era, with the possible exception of German Reunification. The trends are consistent and robust across various periods.
Perhaps the other countries are more supply constrained than the U.S., especially post reconstruction. But that also refutes the insinuation that U.S. monetary policy is responsible for price inflation, and makes less credible the fears of some younger Americans that the bottom will fall out irreversibly the moment they make a home purchase.