Unexpectedly Intriguing!
15 January 2020

The rate of growth of new home sale prices in the U.S. has slowed significantly from historic rates. The following chart shows one of our favorite ways to measure that growth rate, tracking the amount of time it has taken for the median new home sale price in the United States to double since January 1963, the earliest that monthly data for the statistic is available.

Median and Average Monthly U.S. New Home Sale Prices, January 1963 through November 2019

Starting from January 1963, the median sale price of a new home sold in the U.S. has sustainably doubled four times, with the amount of time it has needed taking 134 months, 104 months, 167 months, and 217 months to do so, with the most recent doubling period ending in October 2014.

In the next chart, we've zoomed in on the period since January 2000 for average and median new home sale prices, where we find that new home sale prices hit a peak in December 2017 before slowly declining in the months since.

Median and Average Monthly U.S. New Home Sale Prices, January 2000 through November 2019

What makes this period different from earlier periods where new home sale prices have declined is the absence of recession. In fact, median household income has been generally rising after adjusting for inflation since the end of 2016, where the combination with falling median new home sale prices means that new homes have been becoming more affordable in the U.S. The following chart shows the ratio of the trailing twelve month averages of median new home sale prices and median household income since 1967.

Ratio of Trailing Twelve Month Averages for Median New Home Sale Prices and Median Household Income, Annual: 1967 to 2017 | Monthly: December 2000 to November 2019

For the affordability of new homes sold in the U.S., the last two years have been unique among all the years in the last five and half decades for which we have data.

References

U.S. Census Bureau. Median and Average Sales Prices of New Homes Sold in the United States. [PDF Document]. Accessed 12 January 2020.

Labels:

About Political Calculations

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

ironman at politicalcalculations

Thanks in advance!

Recent Posts

Indices, Futures, and Bonds

Closing values for previous trading day.

Most Popular Posts
Quick Index

Site Data

This site is primarily powered by:

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

CSS Validation

Valid CSS!

RSS Site Feed

AddThis Feed Button

JavaScript

The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.

Other Cool Resources

Blog Roll

Market Links

Useful Election Data
Charities We Support
Shopping Guides
Recommended Reading
Recently Shopped

Seeking Alpha Certified

Archives