
Change in Real Home Prices Since 2000 - wjossey
http://harvard-cga.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=0e9603b62db14611834fd3dfd8645316
======
ucaetano
Oh, looking at this it is worth remembering that NIMBYism and real estate
prices are one of the biggest drivers of inequality in the world.

Housing doesn't have to be expensive. It is, mostly, due to political reasons.

[https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/2164734...](https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/21647349-rising-house-prices-may-be-chiefly-responsible-rising-
inequality-through)

~~~
api
"Real estate cannot simultaneously be affordable and a good investment."

As soon as someone becomes a homeowner, it becomes in his/her best interests
to make sure others cannot become homeowners at anything but a higher price.
It's one of the most extreme perverse incentives in modern economies.

~~~
Retric
Taxes can be a counterpoint to this. So, you want low value unless you're
going to sell soon.

~~~
raldi
To provide a little more detail on davidw's comment: In several US states,
your property tax is locked in when you buy a house.

So you could have two identical houses next door to each other, one last sold
in 1975, the other 2015, and their property taxes would likely differ by a
factor of at least 30x.

~~~
mikeyouse
To Raldi's point.. Two random houses near Pacific Heights:

[https://i.imgur.com/kltiDm4.png?1](https://i.imgur.com/kltiDm4.png?1)

But at least people with $10 million houses are spared the indignity of paying
for local services.

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notadoc
In many west coast locations, house prices are far beyond the prior housing
bubble peaks, I often come across places that are 75% to 100% more than they
were during the mid-2000s bubble.

Pick any popular western location, city, or neighborhood, and you'll find
prices 300% and 500% higher than they were in 2000 and often double or more
what they were in the first housing boom. And no, incomes have not increased
that much. Many of these areas have price-to-income ratios into the absurd of
10x-15x. Outside of San Francisco, does anyone really think that is
sustainable?

~~~
mistermann
How many new multimillionaires does China produce each year?

~~~
api
I'd love to see some real data on just how much Chinese and other flight
capital being dumped into RE is contributing to these price increases.

~~~
refurb
Rich Chinese we're blamed for the housing bubble in Vancouver and Toronto.
They finally started tracking it and it was barely above 5% (all foreign
purchases). And only if you focused on certain neighborhoods.

95% of purchasers were Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Low interest
rates and willingness to take on a lot of debt is what drove the bubble in
Canada.

~~~
soperj
In Vancouver it was over 5%. In some suburbs - Burnaby and Richmond - (not
neighbourhoods) it was over 15% of purchases. When you consider that most of
these purchasers aren't selling houses at the same time, then it becomes an
even bigger % of actual demand.

edit: just looked at the stats. Metro Vancouver was at about 12.5% of sales,
and Richmond was at nearly 25% of sales before they put in the foreign buyers
tax.

~~~
ericd
This is a very good point - many normal purchasers will be selling a house at
the same time that they're buying one, so there's a net zeroing in additional
housing demand. Renters who are buying a house will leave a rental unit open,
and cause a tiny decrease in rent prices. But investors frequently just take
housing off the market, and contribute to a shortage. And as with most life
necessities, housing is somewhat inelastic in terms of demand, so shortages
cause skyrocketing prices.

------
rm999
Fill in the gaps with blue, and you have something very similar to the
population density map of the USA:
[https://mwlibertyfest.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/us-pop-
dis...](https://mwlibertyfest.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/us-pop-dist.gif)

This seems to reflect the "graying" of rural America:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-
gra...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-graying-of-
rural-america/485159). Younger generations are moving to denser areas, driving
property values up. This isn't a bad thing per se (denser populations are more
environmentally friendly), but is probably driving some of the division in the
USA today.

~~~
yessql
I was just thinking how well this correlates with the presidential election
map.

------
wjossey
The differences between the middle of the country and the east & west coast,
since 2000, is startling.

I'd love to see this sort of graphic normalized against wage inflation as
well. Is what we're seeing just fairly flat wage stagnation in the midwest,
but wage inflation on the coasts (leading to a rise in housing prices)? If we
start to see salary multiples of 3x, 4x, or 5x, if you just live on a
coastline, what will that end up doing to interstate trade and commerce? Will
the middle of the country begin to lose some of their buying power, purely
because their inflation rates are lower?

~~~
lotsofpulp
I bet it's a combination of things. West coast cities are more desirable for
younger people, there's better weather, a more socially liberal climate, more
employers and other young people to interact with, and the networking
opportunities. Plus overseas investors looking to put their cash in safe
haven, but I would ascribe most of it to it just being a more desirable place
to live.

~~~
zzbzq
According to all the generation-war articles, young people don't have any
money, so in that view the places desirable to young people would be declining
in value.

I have a feeling the truth might be simple. Normal home values are mostly
stagnant or down (due to the 2000s bubble), no further explanation needed.
Regions that are exceptionally down are just actually in decline economically.
Regions that have risen slightly are economically rising. Regions that are
exceptionally up are a combination of economic success and intentional real
estate manipulation for financial motives (for example, property owners
purposefully obstructing the development of new homes, which is a common
accusation in bay area threads on this very site.)

~~~
lotsofpulp
Not necessarily. Young people might not have enough money (or income security)
to afford a down payment and mortgage, but they do have enough money to split
rent for an apartment/condominium/house with 1 or more other people. And the
folks migrating to the desirable cities are probably more resourceful than the
ones who are not, but their extra earnings are captured by landlords, who can
then use the higher rents to justify higher property prices.

Edit: I wonder if it's possible the quantify the role income security, or lack
thereof, plays in home prices.

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jorblumesea
Everyone here is talking about bubble, overpricing, inflations etc. But the
long term demographic shift is coastal growth at the expense of the rest of
the country. The West coast especially has a booming economy and is growing at
a very rapid pace.

I think most of the price increase is just a supply/demand issue. Lots of
people moving to coastal areas and American cities are terrible are high
density housing and planning.

------
geogra4
Man, buffalo and pittsburgh must be doing something special compared to the
rest of the rust belt? I wonder what's going on there.

~~~
aphextron
Pittsburgh has a thriving tech and financial sector, driven by CMU and PNC
respectively. Buffalo has never quite been part of the "rust belt", they're
more east coast. They have lot of stable government employment because of New
York state.

~~~
protomyth
Doesn't Buffalo benefit by being right across from Toronto?

~~~
temp-dude-87844
Surprisingly, no. Though the Buffalo areas' ports of entry draw about as much
cross-border traffic as Detroit (but not including Port Huron-Sarnia also in
Michigan), Toronto's proximity to Buffalo is not often felt.

A few trade and investment groups have been working in the last 15 years to
attract Canadian companies to Buffalo with good success, but largely Canada's
influence grows towards Michigan and approaching Chicago, and it's the US'
influence that grows along the Niagara border into Canada's Greater Toronto
area.

------
temp-dude-87844
There are a few that surprise me here -- declines for Indianapolis, Columbus
-- these first two are really odd, but also Columbia, Augusta, and almost all
of Alabama.

I know none of these places have the draw of the coasts, but are solid metros
that have seen some growth since the recession.

Is it just that they're being outcompeted by larger regional neighbors, like
Atlanta, Charlotte, and Charleston?

Why is all of Indiana and Ohio so blue when the two state capitals and their
suburbs have been recovering much better than that region's other cities?

~~~
scruple
> Why is all of Indiana and Ohio so blue when the two state capitals and their
> suburbs have been recovering much better than that region's other cities?

I'd _love_ to have an answer to this question, too. I grew up in rural central
Ohio. There is still some industry hanging on, but just barely. All that I can
hazard to speculate now is that it will be very interesting to see what
happens to those areas when the coming trucking-industry revolution hits.

------
jordache
Why does arcGIS have the non conforming UI where scroll of the mouse wheel
moves the map vertically instead of being the zoom?

~~~
bumblebeard
I dunno if they've changed it since you looked but scroll is zoom for me
(Firefox 52 on Debian).

~~~
jordache
today on latest chrome on OS X... scroll pans the map up and down.

Shift+scroll pans the map left and right.

the most convoluted web app in the world

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babesh
Overlay the Presidential election results.

~~~
JBReefer
Totally agree. Also, compare with this map of heroin deaths per capita [0].
They're shockingly close.

[https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-
apps/imrs.php?src=https://...](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-
apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/12/opiate_maps-021.png&w=1484)

------
charred_toast
This is going to sound paranoid, obviously, but I was thinking if China ever
wanted to start a war with North America, it has quite a sizable population in
the US and Canada that could potentially contribute to that aim.

~~~
CountSessine
Much of middle-America (and Canada) was settled by huge numbers of German
immigrants. At the start of WW1, there were similar concerns about German
sympathies.

It just doesn't work that way. These people have made their homes here and
count themselves as Canadians and Americans. They might have sympathies for
the old country (much as many of us in North America do), but the stronger
these sympathies are, the less likely we'll go to war in the first place.

~~~
loeber
German-Americans were, for a long time, the largest national-ethnic group in
the US. After the World Wars, calling oneself a German-American went out of
fashion.

There are some interesting articles on the matter:

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/opinion/whatever-
happened...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/opinion/whatever-happened-to-
german-america.html)

[2] [https://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21642222-americ...](https://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21642222-americas-largest-ethnic-group-has-assimilated-so-well-people-
barely-notice-it)

