You need to adjust those numbers for inflation [1]. The result for inflating $17,000 from 1970 to 2000 is $75,448.45. So $119,600 is about a 37% increase which is not a lot more than 34%.

[1] http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

here are better numbers: https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/uspricemon.pdf

Jan 1970 $23,600(adjusted for inflation 148,993.25)

Jan 2017 $317,400

The other one stopped at 2000.

213%

75448*1.37 = 103363

I come up with 58% higher.

CAGR of median house prices:

1970-1980 - 11%, 1980-1990 - 5.3%, 1990-2000 - 4.2%, 1970-2000 - 6.7%, 1980-2000 - 4.8%

Median household incomes (US census source I found only goes back to 1975): https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...

1975 - 11800, 1980 - 17710, 1990 - 29943, 2000 - 41990

CAGRs: 1975-1980 - 8.4%, 1980-1990 - 5.4%, 1990-2000 - 3.4%, 1975-2000 - 5.2%, 1980-2000 - 4.4%

For like period to like period (1980-2000), the tracking error is a cumulative 16% over a 20-year period, or about 0.4% per year.

Real estate markets are local. This analysis only works if you do it for every local metro region and then aggregate. What you'd find is "jobs or affordable housing, pick one." Metro areas with hot job markets have inflated massively, while metro areas with bad job markets have seen little real estate inflation or even deflation. The end result is that you can't get ahead. Good jobs mean you're just shoveling it all into real estate.

This is actually a well established economic principle known as the "law of rent." I've wondered if maybe the middle class explosion of the mid century was driven by the automobile since it allowed cities to physically expand. This allowed people to temporarily escape the law of rent. But now we've hit the limit of that, so the law of rent has re-asserted itself.

Of the factors I mentioned housing is the worst. I recently heard someone call real estate the "great Satan" of the economy.

Someone made an insightful comment on HN a couple weeks ago: "housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment." ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857591 ;) )

With interest rates as low as they are currently, housing prices are correspondingly inflated (via increased purchasing power for a given/fixed monthly payment). That's pushing us towards the "good historical investment" side of the pendulum, but if interest rates were to return to the 1980s' double-digit figures, it would swing back towards affordable.