We’re Now In the Second Biggest Housing Boom of All Time

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Over on the Twitter box, a reader asks if I can update a New York Times chart that I posted seven years ago. It shows average housing prices through 2006, and he’d like to see them through 2017. Well, so would I, and luckily for both of us, Robert Shiller keeps a spreadsheet of this stuff that he updates monthly. So here it is for the entire period since World War II:

The most remarkable feature of this chart is that between 1953 and 1997, average housing prices increased by zero percent. Zero. This is very much not what people expect to see. Conventional wisdom says that homes are always and forever good investments, but for nearly half a century that just wasn’t true. Adjusted for inflation, home prices were flat.

The second most remarkable feature of this chart is, of course, the insane Bush-era boom. Here in California we considered the 80s boom to be a very, very big deal. But it was a mere blip. The Bush boom was without precedent.

Finally, we get to the third most remarkable feature of this chart: the Obama-Trump era boom that’s happening right now. Compared to the previous boom it might not seem like much, but it’s already far larger than any other previous housing boom. And we have no idea how much further it has to go.

So what happens next? Are things really different this time, and home prices will stay permanently high? Or are we due for another housing bust? Beats me. Nor do I know what will happen if housing prices do collapse. It would be painful, of course, but how painful depends a lot on what kind of mortgage loans people are taking out; how much equity they have in their homes; and what kind of crap Wall Street is packaging all this stuff into. So far, things look OK on that front, so a housing collapse would mainly have an effect via the wealth effect, which would slash consumption. That would be bad, but only half as bad as the previous bubble, and there would be no financial crisis tailwind to make it even worse.

I don’t quite see how home prices can stay at their current level, which is historically very high, but I guess you never know.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate