Not an expert, but I did read the article. The point of the "Case-Shiller" metric is that it is computed on the basis of the same exact property changing hands in different time periods. That way it controls for trends in the product pool.

Or as the article put it: Case-Shiller requires two transactions for the same house,” Lazzara said... It controls for the variability in the quality and size of the homes sold from year to year by measuring the change between houses that sold in one period with the prices of the same houses when they last changed owners. “The repeat sales mechanism is a way of adjusting for the mix of product so that you really are getting an apples-to-apples comparison,” Lazzara said.

Does it account for improvements in electrical, air con, comms?

Regardless, we don’t need a fancy index to observe how fucked the market is.

I would also note that you have to consider mortgage rates. They're on the rise now and I'm not sure if it'll still hold, but last time I looked at it the overall payment is down.

In 1987, mortgage rates were about 15%. To put that into perspective, a $100k 30 year fixed rate mortgage would cost you $1,543/mo at 18.45% and only $442/mo at 3.38%.

I only hope that rates going up will deflate the real estate prices but so far they don't appear to be budging

https://mleverything.substack.com/p/buying-a-home-in-the-us-...

People compete on monthly payments not the actual house price. Only people who can pay upfront compete on the house price.

Changing interest doesn't change how many people are willing to live in a location. Your monthly payment will just go to the bank instead.

This article says homes are 74% larger, but compares to 1910.

Not sure why the cost per household member should matter all. I didn’t get a family size discount on my home.

> I didn’t get a family size discount on my home

You do though. The cost of kitchen for a couple without kids, and one for a family of 5 is roughly the same. You might have more square footage overall for house, with more people, but the construction costs are concentrated on the shared spaces like kitchens or even things like living living rooms where square footage will scale sub-linearly with the number of people in the household.

Not to mention there used to be more multigenerational homes...therefore more people to pay the cost.

That has no effect on the price of single family homes. You’re bringing in a very different metric.

That's literally not a discount though.

The index referred to in the article uses repeat sales of the same house, so should be insulated from these effects.