Real Estate Charts

The above chart estimates the market value of today's median-priced Portland, Maine metropolitan area house from 1983 until present. The red line represents inflation-adjusted house prices. The blue line represents nominal house prices.

Note: Some people try to assert that this is a graph for Portland, Oregon, as if I just copy everything Robert Shiller does. I chose which cities to track and I chose Portland, Maine. Notice below that the data source for this graph is the FHFA House Price Index, not the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. This is a graph for Portland, Maine, not Portland, Oregon.

Download the spreadsheet

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Recommended housing bubble blogs

• Policy and Economy (My blog)
• Patrick.net - The housing crash continues
• Realty Check with Diana Olick

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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 the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
• Inflation data provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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 FHFA House Price Index. The FHFA 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. Prior to Q4 1977, the CPI - All Items Less Shelter is used.