If you go back to 1900 you see home ownership rates in the US at less than half of households[1]
The interesting thing to me is how conflated home ownership has become with housing affordability. As we’ve doubled the numbers of home owners we’ve dramatically removed the options for housing.
[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-owner...
The Federal Reserve MANDATES that consumer prices go up 2% per year. If house prices ever go down, they'll be there - waiting - to pump them up.
Prices will rarely ever go down substantially for a long period of time unless the Fed completely changes (I doubt it).
You can either:
1) try to time the market (difficult in housing, I'd argue not as impossible as equitities)
2) buy into the bubble
3) hope that the US basically turns into a different country
4) be ruined financially by missing out on the biggest handout in the history of the world (the 30-year fixed negative real interest rate mortgage)
Pick your poison.
How? Dollars are worth $0.5 in 1990. Yet your mortgage payment is unchanged. Your house payment is much less.
Rents are much higher.
You won.
They didn't "win." They broke even. The people that sold them won. The people with no house but inflated away cash/salary lost.
Someone else is allowed to win, too.
It's a zero sum game, and the only losers have been renters.
That can change if there's a massive, sustained housing crash. But I won't hold my breath for that.
I'm willing to bet, like always, house prices won't decline. The value of the dollar will decline instead (because the Fed can just easily QE until the only people that lose are renters).