Home prices had historically tracked general inflation over time, even during the Great Depression when deflation took over. All this was true until the Wall Street/Federal Reserve purposefully created home price bubble of the early 2000’s. They created that bubble to take over for the previous bubble they created – the Dot.com bubble. Creating fiat/debt out of thin air and doling it out like candy has this effect.
Then reality regained control from 2006 through 2012, with a 33% crash in home prices, except The Fed and Wall Street decided to not let home prices revert to their mean. They colluded to have Wall Street hedge funds buy up all the foreclosed properties at pennies on the dollar. Part two of the plan was for the captured scumbags at the Fed to reduce interest rates to zero and ignite a home price bubble to exceed all home price bubbles. Of course they also purposefully took the national debt from $16 trillion in 2012 to $34 trillion today, a 110% increase. Meanwhile, the Fed increased their balance sheet from $900 billion to $9 trillion, a ten fold increase.
Virtually no one believes home prices could possibly drop 50%, to the long-term average. Except, long term averages are created by prices going below the long-term average. That would be a 75% decline in home prices. The reason no one believes it could happen is because most people have most of their wealth tied up in their homes. The thought of that asset declining by 50% to 75% is unthinkable, therefore they say it could never happen. Denial is not a river.
They say this even though the chart above clearly shows we are in the middle of the greatest bubble of all time, generated solely by money printing. If you think the Federal Government can take our national debt to $60 trillion with no consequences and the Fed can take their balance sheet up another ten fold to $90 trillion, then you can rationalize today’s home prices.
With five to ten years remaining in this Fourth Turning, I do anticipate another financial crash to match the level of the debt created boom. That, along with some sort of global conflict and domestic chaos when the 2024 presidential election goes off the rails, will accelerate the reversion past the mean. Of course, I’ve been predicting this since 2012, so take that into account. My message to those who understand maff is: Look Out Below.
