Must-Read: There were three good reasons in the mid-2000s to believe that housing prices should jump substantially. The coming of secular stagnation—then called the "global savings glut"—greatly boosted demand by boosting how much households could afford to pay for America. The filling-up of America restricted supply: first cars and superhighways had meant that for nearly three generations there were greenfield potential housing sites within thirty minutes of everywhere, but that ended with the twentieth century. At some point the anti-global warming carbon tax will come, and when it does auto transportation will become much more expensive and that will tilt the location price gradient. How much were these worth? Not enough to boost housing prices to their 2005 values. But plausibly enough to boost housing prices to their values today. IMHO, the best way to view the graph is as a positive "displacement" boom caused by true fundamentals, a bubble upward overshoot, a crash downward undershoot, and now (we hope) equilibrium:
Kevin Drum: We're Now In the Second Biggest Housing Boom of All Time: "The most remarkable feature of this chart... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/were-now-second-biggest-housing-boom-all-time
Must-Read: Kevin Drum: We're Now In the Second Biggest Housing Boom of All Time: "The most remarkable feature of this chart... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/were-now-second-biggest-housing-boom-all-time
