I tend to agree with you. Land and housing are still very cheap in rural towns in the midwest - they've moved no more than 2% / year or close to the reported in

I tend to agree with you. Land and housing are still very cheap in rural towns in the midwest - they've moved no more than 2% / year or close to the reported inflation rate. So why are homes so expensive in urban areas, including now tier 2 and tier 3 cities, and not just NYC, DC, and SF? Look at our population growth. In the 'good times' of the 1960s, we had 180M people. Now we have double that in two generations, or the difference between Boomers and Millenials approximately. In 1960, places like SF and Arlington, VA weren't rural farmland, they were still urban areas. We now have higher density in the large cities due to jobs having moved there, so we probably have 3x the number of people desiring homes in the same area as we had in 1960. And families are smaller now. In 1960, you'd have a family of 5 in one house. Now you need two houses for the two 2.5 / person families. So essentially we've probably got 4x the demand for the homes close to working centers, along with rising base prices due to far more women in the workforce. Add perpetual low interest rates, underreported inflation, and I'm surprised houses aren't at SF levels in every city yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_Uni...