Chart of the day

Recent press reports suggest that the US real estate market is slowing. For some perspective, today's chart illustrates the US median price of a single-family home over the past 35 years. Thanks, in part, to low long-term interest rates, the trend over the past decade has been impressive. Not only have housing prices been increasing at a rapid rate, the rate at which housing prices have been increasing has been increasing. So while the recent softness in the real estate market has resulted in a lower median price for a single-family home, the real estate market as a whole has not yet broken below trend.