The Sales Price of New Single-Family Homes

A house is the largest financial asset most households ever own, and this chart is why the chapter treats it as an investment as well as a place to live. Prices rose steadily from the mid-1970s, accelerated sharply from about 2000, peaked in 2007, and fell back over the next few years as the financial crisis unwound the housing boom.

By the mid-2010s prices had passed their pre-crisis peak, and they rose steeply again at the start of the 2020s. A national figure like this one hides enormous local variation: the same years look very different in different cities. The slider reads the series at a chosen year; the values are sampled from the book's figure.