Real Estate Charts

The above chart estimates the market value of today's median-priced Los Angeles, California metropolitan area house from 1987 until present. The red line represents inflation-adjusted house prices. The blue line represents nominal house prices.

Download the spreadsheet

---

Recommended housing bubble blogs

• Dr. Housing Bubble
• Patrick.net - The housing crash continues
• Realty Check with Diana Olick

---

Data sources and methodology

• Latest quarterly, median, existing, single-family home price provided by the National Association of Realtors.
• Trailing house price index data provided by Standard & Poors.
• Inflation data provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

The chart on this page estimates the market value of today's median-priced house over time. The trailing nominal prices are derived by taking the recent median price of existing single-family homes, as reported by the National Association of Realtors, and discounting it by the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. The S&P/Case-Shiller HPI is a "constant quality" index, so even though houses are built larger today than they were many years ago, this graph automatically adjusts for this variation. The trailing inflation-adjusted prices are then derived by adjusting the nominal prices by the CPI-U Research Series Using Current Methods.