> None of this happens in a vacuum.

Doesn’t this hurt your case as well?

Every housing chart I’ve seen for metro areas shows a distinct boom/bust cycle in housing that is indicative of mean reversion to around 25-30% of payment to earnings ratio. Many metro areas in US are over 40% now.

I don't know how it would hurt my argument - I'm saying it's more complicated than 'prices are high so there must be a bubble'

Over what period? Have there been any fundamental changes in the financing or supply of housing? How about the people purchasing homes - are there any differences between cycles? It's also possible that income rises without housing prices falling at all. That hasn't happened since the 60's, but it's possible.

Also, I don't think there are distinct boom/bust cycles in housing generally, because the charts lack the necessary trough. Look at the House Price Index for New York, for example; it is not representative of a distinct boom/bust cycle at all; price retractions are a fraction of the previous growth and last for shorter periods over the last 47 years.

Further, I don't think it's indicative of mean reversion to around 25%-30% because the house price growth rate has outpaced the income growth rate by 2-3X for over 50 years.

Are you saying that this only applies to metro areas?

Could you share some examples of this data? Mine mostly comes from the St. Louis Fed: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/

The following chart shows clearly the boom and bust cycles since 1960 of US and UK markets and how the price/income ratio reverts to around 4.5 to 5. The current statistic is near an all time high of 7.5, 50% higher than it should be.

https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...

So what you refer to as the bust is when it reverts from boom to the mean, and your evidence is that this has happened...once?

This isn't really a chart showing a cycle, at least not a multi-year cycle. You have 40 years of between 4 and 5, then a 5 year bubble and a retrenchment that bottoms out at about 5 before rising again.

There's no consistent cycle, though. If, for example, every 20 years you had it cross 5 and go to 6 then go back to 4 for a few years before repeating, that would be a cycle.

Cycles are clearly shown in the chart. They do not have to be consistent in gap as no economic business cycles present that way. Of course, these numbers are aggregate across all housing in 2 countries so the cycles are muted versus local min/max demonstrated in specific metro areas.

Even small swings from 5 to 4 demonstrate a 25% swing in aggregate housing prices, which is still significant. The whipsawing recently since 2000 represent two swings of around 75% in aggregate housing prices relative to incomes.