| > Inflation's been normal? Actually, inflation has been very low. > The median price of a US home has gone up 45% The median sale price of existing homes has gone up 45%. Without knowing the profile of homes sold, it's hard to say what it means. It could just be that turnover has accelerated at the higher end of the market, or slowed at the lower end, or both (which would be consistent with basically everything I've seen about the real estate market since 2008, both in terms of direct reports and indirect influences—better lending terms but stricter qualifications to get a loan at all, for instance.) > The US is experiencing at least 13% and practically 45% asset-price inflation over the period you referenced. Asset-price inflation isn’t what the unqualified term inflation refers to, and aside for the fact that money supply can drive both, is otherwise driven by different forces to general inflation (both in terms of distributional and behavioral drivers.) > I would hardly say that's "normal". Why not? Certainly the home price measure you've chosen went up a lot less in the 12 years from the trough in 2008 that you measured from than it did in the 12 years leading up to the peak just before the downturn. Even ignoring the question of whether it's a relevant measure, by what standard is it unusually high? |