this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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Work Reform
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Interesting claim. Let's look into it.
Average home price in 1970: $25k I found a few different figures on this one, and averaged them out.
$25k 1970 dollars in 2026 per CPI: $220,251 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25000&year1=197001&year2=202604
not necessary, but gives context: Average (not median) home price today: $502k https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
Median home price today: $410k https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
"The median money income of all families in 1970 was about $9,870" https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1971/demo/p60-80.html
Median family income in 2024 (most recent year reported): $105,800 [note: does anyone believe this? FRED is claiming median family income went up 45% in the past decade and I find that EXTRAORDINARILY suspect. Few people get COLA over 3% and many getting fuckall.] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N
roughly a 10.7X increase
My best guess is that Mr. Brooks, using slightly different numbers (sources vary, exact years, etc...), to arrive at: 1970 Home Price + Flat Income Gains = $138,000. This is not great methodology, as growth is looked at in percentages for a reason. To illustrate, suppose instead of a house we were looking at candy bars. Let's say in 1970 a candy bar was a dime and today it's $2. Grafting raw wage gains onto candy bars, we're saving over $80k on each candy bar!!! Oh wait, that's silly. Let's stick with percentages.
Using the official wage numbers, we arrive at "the average home today would be $267,500". This is more accurate yet still a massive departure from where we are today.
So... what actually broke?
There are several explanations for this divergence.
The Good: Houses today are bigger and have better construction standards. Please, before you start typing a survivorship bias based claim about your house from 1905 that's still in great shape today, read up on survivorship bias. Yes, there are modern builders who do shoddy work (we've all seen the Youtube videos), but overall a house built to code in 2026 is significantly more advanced. A fair amount of the cost increase can be captured here.
The Bad: Rent seeking. Figurative and literally. Somehow someone was like "hey, I'm going to get rich by making a basic necessity worse" and nobody beat them within an inch of their life to discourage others. Rookie mistake by our society.
The Ugly: Official numbers are suspect at best. This was true before 2025 and whoa boy is it true now. Inflation is chronically under-reported BY DESIGN. That means actual inflation is driving up the cost of houses and cans of bean and things, while reported inflation is being used to determine your pay raise (that is, if you even get one). This divergence that started in the 90s is hitting critical mass here in the roaring 20s and we're probably fucked as I haven't heard anyone in a position of power even recognize this problem, let alone suggest how to fix it.
Renting out a single family home for longer than 3 months at a time without living in it should be an actual crime, or at least extremely (50-80%) tax heavy (the taxes then going towards house subsidies). Owning an unoccupied home should be taxed even worse. A corporation can count as a single person, so a property management company can own a single house OR as many apartment complexes as they want before tax punishment.
The modern version of Airbnb as a business model (people owning 5+ houses to rent for daily prices often in excess of hotel prices with none of the hotel benefits + "cleaning fees") should have millionaires hanging from trees.
I foolishly believe the above two policies alone would cut home prices by at least half.
Agreed. Another, less violent but better for local finances, path forward could be sky high property taxes alongside homestead exemptions. That and greatly simplifying the opaque web of first time homebuyer incentives and options. Passing such a set of reforms would boost tax revenues for a few years, drive up rents while driving down the cost of homes, and then have a tail end boost to home owner industries.
People will dance a thousand dances around the fact that low income housing should be built, owned, and operated by the municipality.
The privately owned house building industry has failed its entire purpose and deserves to lose their place at the table. Those responsible for this problem must not be involved in the solution. Make the army build it. Way better use of our armed forces then whatever the fuck is going on these days. Or a WPA like program.
Stop fucking begging these douchebags to fix a problem they caused. A problem they profit off of.