More housing graphs

Stephen Gordon, of the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative blog, has some interesting housing graphs. U.S. inflation-adjusted per capita housing assets are back to 2000 levels:

U.S. inflation-adjusted per capita housing equity is through the floor:

Stephen Gordon writes:

I was able to check the last time the real, per capita value of US housing equity was at its current level. Even after looking at all of these graphs, the answer astonished me: 1978. Nineteen seventy-freaking-eight.

While the rise and fall is obvious from these two graphs, the thing I notice is that they were both basically flat prior to 1998. In fact, that's what Robert Shiller's research says: Inflation-adjusted housing values tend to be flat over time. The only way per capita real housing assets should rise is if people build larger houses.