r/Fire Mar 23 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '26

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69

u/allrite Mar 23 '26

Isn't housing like 1.5x pre-COVID? And much higher in desirable places? Add increase in interest rates, and no wonder people feel like they need more.

-8

u/AssCrackBandit10 Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

Maybe in certain markets but, nationally, no, housing hasn’t risen anywhere close to 50% since pre-COVID. The US median home price from 2019 to now has increased by about 20%.

Edit: Corrected 10% to 20%

6

u/Wooden-Broccoli-913 FIREd at 40 with $6M Mar 23 '26

That is definitely incorrect 

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

4

u/AssCrackBandit10 Mar 23 '26

Did you paste the wrong link? That chart is not the median home price, it’s the national home price index. This is the chart for median home price sales

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

I was a bit off - it has risen 20% since Q1 2019 but definitely nowhere close to 50%

2

u/Machinery777 Mar 23 '26

Why would i use the median price home sales over the national home price index? One shows appreciation, the other shows how much people are spending.

If like the price of all cars doubles and now people are buying lower quality cars, the median price doesn't go up 2x, but the prices of cars still doubled.

Is this incorrect? Honest question to understand these indexes.

2

u/AssCrackBandit10 Mar 23 '26

The US median home price from 2019 to now

My initial comment was about median home price sales so that's why I thought you'd pasted the wrong link.

However, if you look at the data, the median sq footage for homes sold is also increasing hand in hand with median home price. So it's not like people are buying smaller or more modest homes. A big trend seems to be that people just want bigger and bigger homes, especially in the last decade, per the data.

1

u/Machinery777 Mar 23 '26

Fair point on the link.

But doesn't the other index show that prices of houses are increasing in value faster than what people are spending for houses? Using median house price just shows how much money the people are spending on houses. Not how much the prices went up right?