(New York)

A new study out of Harvard makes a very interesting point about US home prices. While real estate prices have seen a strong and steady rise since the bottoms of the Crisis, and prices in many markets seem very lofty, the truth is that the cost of owning a home actually hasn’t risen for the last thirty years. How is that possible? The answer is that while home prices have risen compared to income, interest rates have also fallen strongly, meaning the monthly mortgage payment it costs to actually own a home has remained pretty much flat sine 1987 (on an inflation-adjusted basis).

FINSUM: So this is a good point, but the reality is that the monthly payment does not account for the huge down payment that families now need to come up with (which they did not back when interest rates were at 12%).