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The ballooning money supply may be the key to unlocking inflation in the U.S.
- as_keyof_typeof 6y agoIs anyone (who is paid/lives in the US) concerned about the future value of USD? A lot of my friends are saying I should be investing in cryptocurrencies for future safety, but I don't see those as very stable, so I'm hesitant to put my savings into it.
- jlmorton 6y agoThere are all sorts of inflation-protected assets you can buy. At a basic level, any durable asset will provide inflation protection. But you could also buy things like Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities.
- scsilver 6y agoI think the safest dollar hedges right now are bluechip tech stocks and a forever home(if you need one and get take advantage of rock bottom rates)
- bpodgursky 6y agoI don't know why you'd say tech stocks (where volatility is high) but land and safe equities are the traditional hedges yes.
- anoraca 6y agoThey said bluechip tech stocks. Companies that have been around for decades and aren't going anywhere. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Intel, etc.
- unishark 6y agoThey could go also back where they were a year ago and lose half your money. Then enjoy a lost decade of no recovery as the US piles up Japan-style debt. Not making a prediction, just saying what goes up fast can also come down just as fast. For less narrow stock choices, there's whole index funds, both domestic and international. Also bond funds.
- scudd 6y agoWhat if you don't need a home, but could realistically finance one? Is there incentivisation in real estate over stable(-ish) equities if you're not looking for a long term home for yourself/family
- scsilver 6y agoThe only advantage I see is that huge amount of capital you can borrow at a low rate, probably lower than the rate of a weakening dollar, and could potentially turn it into a rental to pull in inflation adjusting income, in addition to your fixed work income. That said, pulling your down payment out of rising stocks to do so may not be the most profitable, but it does serve as a good diversification of asset. Im not a financial advisor, just a software engineer, but my father is and I've convinced him into buying a second home with me when the right one becomes available (waiting for the supply to open up a bit, we lost our first offer to a cash offer). Key points for purchasing were diversification of assets, pulling out some money from the high riding market before a blue sweep and subsequent taxes, and rates so low that combined with inflation(including assets) the gov is paying you to take out a loan.
- companyhen 6y ago1-10% into crypto is fine as long as you invest in the bluechips (Bitcoin and Ethereum) depending on your risk tolerance. Don't go all in, and dollar cost average.
- qw3rty01 6y agoCryptocurrency is certainly not a good place to put savings, as its price is way too unstable to be a store of value. If you're unsure about the value of the USD, then traditional investments like gold would probably be a better choice. Like other comments mention, even though lots of money was created for economic stimulus, it's used in such a way that makes it deflationary long-term (as seen by the projected 0.62% inflation rate for this year and only 2.24% next year[1]). [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/244983/projected-inflation-rate-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/244983/projected-inflati...
- mcfly1985 6y ago> Cryptocurrency is certainly not a good place to put savings Found the short-sighted sheep.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI am, and have been dedicating about 20% of each paycheck directly into Bitcoin.
- cultus 6y agoThis really isn't a rational thing to do as an individual. You aren't going to beat more sophisticated players.
- tylerhou 6y agoIf you're concerned about the USD and you want a low-risk way to invest your money, you could invest in a basket of foreign bond funds: https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/portfolio/vtabx https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/portfolio...
- staticman2 6y agoIf you are concerned about USD buy international index funds. Cryptocurrencies are gambling. I would not go for that.
- cultus 6y agoInvesting in crypto is always nuts, but especially if you are trying to reduce risk. Don't listen to your friends. Buy index funds, with more into bonds if you really want less risk. You won't ever beat the market on average as a retail trader.
- rogerkirkness 6y agoWhen money supply expands faster than trade, you're going to have a bad time (in the future). We shall see how many USD it takes to buy goods from overseas.
- curiousgal 6y agoIsn't that the idea behind QE? The money supply is growing but the number of bonds is not?
- whoisburbansky 6y agoAlternatively, it might turn out to be a pretty good counterbalance to China's tampering with their money supply to keep the yuan artificially much cheaper than it would be in a free market.
- disown 6y agoEverybody "tampers" with their money supply. And there is no such thing as a "free market". Not in currency, international trade, etc. All markets are controlled and manipulated. It's like every parrots what they hear. Edit: Oh god. Here comes the "CCP" nonsense. All countries have tight capital controls. And the tight capital control was part of the bargain for trade between china and the US. It's not like they did it secretly. They did it openly for decades as it was their stated goal and provided benchmarks and press releases. It's like the Fed openly advocating for inflation of 3% for decades and you claiming that they are "tampering". It isn't "tampering". It is the goal/agreement/system/etc. Now whether that capital control regime should continue is another debate. Just like whether 3% inflation is a worthy target. But to claim otherwise is just peter navarro style nonsense. It's just parroting. Edit1: > The Euro is the 'least tampered' big currency arguably because they have 25 nations each of whom would scream if the other tampered, meaning almost by definition it has to have integrity. Hard to imagine such nonsense on HN. One of the problems in the EU is that some countries, like greece/italy/etc, feel that the value of the euro is being too greatly manipulated by germany. It's why britain was part of the EU but kept their currency. It's why every few years you hear about greece or italy leaving the EU/euro. The idea that the euro isn't manipulated is nonsense. All currencies are manipulated to achieve the goals of the nation/region/business community/banks/etc. And all currencies are political instruments as well as financial ones.
- rllearneratwork 6y agoThis helps middle class very short term, but would absolutely annihilate us medium to long term.
- ch4s3 6y agoDoesn't that depend on thing like foreign trade volume and long term demand abroad for US Dollars? I wouldn't suggest that we keep printing money at this pace, but it seems like for the moment there's more than enough appetite for the Dollar and it's trading fairly strongly against other currencies.
- anoraca 6y agoAny thoughtful reasoning behind that? Or just fatalistic absolutist predictions of doom?
- rllearneratwork 6y agomiddle class, long-term, needs to buy housing, educate their kids, and save for retirement. The price of all of the three above is rising very fast. Yes, there are other (different) factors for all 3, but too much monetary supply is one of them.
- uzakov 6y agoHow easy is it in the USA to get an academic scholarship?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kenforthewin 6y agoA link to a claim on reddit with no citation. Not saying it's wrong but it's certainly not a quality post.
- eightysixfour 6y agoHere's an alternative: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/the-ballooning-money-supply-may-be-the-key-to-unlocking-inflation-in-the-us.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/the-ballooning-money-supply-...
- teabee89 6y agoWhat is the source? Mainly are we talking about cash or are we talking about money created by banks via credit?
- LatteLazy 6y agoLots of YouTube channels and forums quote this but I can't see a mainstream news or government or tier 1 bank mention it...
- atwebb 6y agoI'm admittedly new to this but there is mention that the supply should double every 10 years, which it looks like it hasn't (or just right at), are we playing catch up? Is the 10 year from an inflation target? 2004 - 2014 was an 80% growth. 2001 - 2011 was 60% growth 2011 it was 9600, today it is around 18k, seems like we're on track to 2021 and playing catchup. What am I not understanding? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2
- anm89 6y agoAny average including 2008-2011, is not a meaningful way to think about what is average historically in terms of US monetary supply. That period was the beginning of a paradigm shift in terms of how the US enacted monetary policy, which was on top of another paradigm shift that had occurred with the Greenspan Era. Which is to say we are in extremely uncharted territory. If you took average measurements of a star in the initial periods of a supernova, you would get a very strange understanding of what is average for that star although technically the figures would be valid averages.
- atwebb 6y agoA bit late but that's what I don't understand, there are discussions around the inflating of the money supply in the tail end but it looks like it's just on target and prior was deflationary. This is making an assumption on the target being correct.
- apsec112 6y agoPeople keep predicting inflation, but it remains stubbornly below the Fed's target rate of 2%, which is itself low compared to 20th century averages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_Index#/media/File:Inflation_and_oil.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_I...
- rllearneratwork 6y agoYeah, maybe a gallon of milk did not increase that much. But did you see prices for houses? for education? for cars? for entertainment? even high-end electronics? Yes, for all those categories there are other (even more important) factors than inflation, but overall, we see a growth much larger than CPI
- pauldickwin 6y agoThe prices for these things did not go up because the fed gave people stimulus checks to pay for their daily needs.
- btilly 6y agoYes they did. When you give people stimulus checks, they spend it. That money enters circulation. It winds up in the pockets of businesses. And from there to the owners of said businesses. Which, since they have money and this is a horrible business environment to invest in, means that money goes into assets. Which drives up the price of the assets.
- notafraudster 6y agoI'm having a hard time parsing your comparison; the prices for houses and education are out of control, the prices of cars rise rapidly but are mostly driven by the evolving conception of what cars are, entertainment and electronics seem historically cheap. Was your intent to say that all of these have rapidly increasing prices?
- rory 6y agoAll the things you enumerated are included in the fed's calculation of CPI. Are you arguing their weightings are bad?
- whoisburbansky 6y agoPresumably https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.h... is the source for the claim posted. Shows a 12 month increase in M2 of 23.3 percent.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoThis link should really point somewhere more substantive
- pauldickwin 6y agoWell... it's Reddit.
- danaos 6y agoWell, it's r/bitcoin which is arguably even worse.
- ryneandal 6y agoI've never been to the subreddit, but then followed the link and regrettably read a few comments.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoThe signal/noise ratio on that subreddit was unusablely low start at least ~2017. /r/btc is marginally better, but most of the popular cryptocurrency subreddits are very low quality.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago/r/bitcoin is a heavily monitored and censored subreddit. Anything not in line with message is deleted, anyone who tried regularly is banned or shadow banned. It is basically /r/thedonald for cryptocurrency. Even here if you post something negative about it here you can see your votes go down in clusters (while possibly going up in between).
- alexjray 6y agoThe fed has pumped 2.3 trillion dollars into the economy in the past six weeks.... I don't see how the dollar won't crash eventually. Why would foreign countries still buy US bonds?
- jlmorton 6y agoBecause the dollars have not been permanently pumped into the economy, and the world has faith that the Fed will shrink its balance sheet. Printing money and lending it out, and then burning the money when it's repaid, is very different than printing money and using it to buy goods and services.
- KaoruAoiShiho 6y agoI think this thread needs an ELI5 for how the whole process works from the ground up as there seems to be a lot of popular misconceptions.
- alexjray 6y agoThat would be incredibly useful
- gen3 6y agoThis Planet money episode addresses the whole topic of where the Fed is getting all the money from, and how inflation fits into the picture. I found it pretty helpful. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/821787090 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/821787090
- alexjray 6y agoThat's a best case scenario and feels overly optimistic. What are the chances it gets fully repaid?
- lotsofpulp 6y agoAssuming society continues onward, it doesn't really need to be fully repaid. The value is in the organization and structure of society. However, war, environmental catastrophes, population decline, and loss of trust between citizens of a nation can cause a decrease in the predictability of actions and consequences in society, and that would be a problem for any debt issued with rosier assumptions.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- smallnamespace 6y agoThe Fed is only creating bank reserves, which does not create more money. Therefore, the Fed has not been printing money. When the Fed buys assets (government bonds, Fannies, etc.) from a bank, the bank gets back 'bank reserves', which are just a number in the bank's Federal Reserve account somewhere. Those reserves can't be lent out. The bank can make no change to its lending, because it's a one-to-one swap (highly liquid government treasury -> bank reserve). A bank's constraint against lending more is its equity reserve ratio, which is unchanged by Fed asset purchases. Again, this is not printing money; functionally speaking, US Treasuries are already 'money' to a bank (they are extremely liquid, widely traded internationally, safe, and in many contexts actually preferable to cash), so swapping a US Treasury with cash is just turning one type of money into another; no net creation. There's a simple reason the Fed doesn't clear up this confusion: the central bank prefers people to think they are printing money, because credibility is important to their effectiveness. And the Fed doesn't actually print money, because they don't have the legal authority to do so. This is why Powell is regularly getting in front of Congress to urge more stimulus spending: he knows it's the only way to get dollars directly into the hands of ordinary Americans.
- neffy 6y agoI'm sorry, that is flat out incorrect. They are printing asset and liability money this time around. Observe: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 The is (give or take money market funds) the total sum of money in US bank accounts. Compare and contrast with 2008 for example, where the asset money creation was restricted to the asset side because it was used to take dodgy loans out of the banking system and put them into runoff. As to why there isn't much inflation yet, well there is. The stock market is considerably inflated due to this, and inflation will creep into the rest of the financial system over time, as this works its way into regulatory capital. but tldr: it is absolutely printing money - arguably it was the only thing they could do at the time, and the European Central Bank has done similar although less dramatic things, but the longer term consequences will definitely be interesting.
- smallnamespace 6y ago
- stillbourne 6y agoHow much older currency was destroyed in the process?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- loourr 6y agoThe Fed has confused inflation with the change in price of consumer goods, but this has led them to all sorts of flawed thinking. In my view, inflation IS the debasement of the currency. One would typically expect consumer prices to change when the currency is debased but when you literally define it as such you give yourself all sorts of additional levers to pull that distort the true situation. For instance technology fundamentally drives down the price of goods. Have I reduced inflation by improving technology? Offshoring manufacturing to get cheaper labor reduces the price of consumer goods. Have I increased the soundness of the money by doing so?
- cs702 6y agoNot an accurate headline. Here's what actually has happened: * The Fed has doubled (!) the number of assets on its balance sheet by creating new monetary instruments and using a big swath of them to purchase financial assets like treasuries and mortgage backed bonds, helping maintain price stability in those and other financial assets. In fact, the Fed has created more new monetary assets during the past five-plus months than in the entirety of 2008-2009, during the worst of the global financial crisis. Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL * The US Treasury, which must borrow funds or collect taxes in order to spend any money, has increased its spending massively during the pandemic, after the passing of significant tax cuts, so it has been incurring federal deficits as a percent of GDP at the fastest rate since WWII. Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S * Tax collections have started to drop, as many sectors of the economy (restaurants, retail stores, malls, office buildings, hotels, travel companies, etc.) are now no longer profitable and have fired or furloughed millions of people. Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W006RC1Q027SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W006RC1Q027SBEA (data available only as of Q2)
- Qasaur 6y ago>The Fed has doubled (!) the number of assets on its balance sheet by creating new monetary instruments and using some of them to purchase financial assets like treasuries and mortgage backed bonds. In fact, the Fed has created more new monetary assets during the past five months than in 2008-2009, during the worst of the global financial crisis. This is printing money and it is not inaccurate to say that they have created U.S. Dollars out of thin air to finance their asset-purchases and "lending" (a debt that will never be paid off) to the U.S. government.
- skybrian 6y agoWhen the US Treasury sells treasuries and the Fed buys them, the result is that they don’t have to be repaid. (If held to maturity, the money goes to the Fed, and the Fed’s profits go to the government.) The Fed bought about 2 trillion in treasuries since the beginning of the year and this could be thought of as printing money, if it isn’t undone.
- beaunative 6y agoI'm not sure why some of the comments seems to be arguing over a point that's complete irrelevant to the key information revealed in this thread. No one in their right mind would think the fed physically printed those money overnight. It may not be money actually printed, but it's definitely money can be printed. The only difference is that with all the financial technologies and tools available, it doesn't have to be printed. Just like how we use credit card, it doesn't have to be physical money, but the money is there, dub, so HN please discuss on what's actually important here, will those money have an effect on everyday life? Eventually yes. And wealth disparity will certainly grow larger. You will need more money to buy assets, it will be harder to get rich. inflation on common good will only happen when everyone gets portion of the money; if it doesn't, it means everyone collectively have about the same to spend on day to day life. Yet, eventually, it will bites back, it means only some people have get the money printed, and those will be the wallstreet
- RIMR 6y agoI love unsubstantiated claims posted anonymously to cryptocurrency groups on social media.
- cm2187 6y agoHow did he get to 22%? The fed balance sheet is 7 trillions now, it was about 4 trillons at the beginning of the year. I’d say it’s more like 40%. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
- comicjk 6y agoMaybe it's the definition of money supply being used? M1 money has increased by about 40%, M2 by about 20%. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.h...
- StartupTree 6y agoThis submission is a link to the bitcoin sub-reddit? SERIOUSLY?
- marketingPro 6y agoWow, taco Bell literally raised their dollar menu prices 19 cents and 29 cents depending on location. Mcdonald's removed their dollar menu. That and stock prices has me pointing to inflation.
- deadmetheny 6y agoThe fact that a one sentence, unsubstantiated claim to /r/bitcoin from a week-old Reddit account is number 14 on the front page of HN shows how fucking sad the state of affairs is around here.
- alexchamberlain 6y agoI may have been listening to too much More or Less (BBC Radio 4): is this a big number? How does it compare to previous financial crises?
- tharne 6y agoThe money printer works great until it doesn't
- mgh2 6y agoWhat inflation rate? These two sources of data show not much difference 1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/244983/projected-inflation-rate-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/244983/projected-inflati... 2. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...
- throw0101a 6y ago> What inflation rate? Official: * https://www.bls.gov/cpi/ https://www.bls.gov/cpi/ It should be noted there are actually different calculation, but generally "Core" is what people are referring to: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_Index#Different_indices_computed_by_the_BLS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_I...
- lordnacho 6y agoI don't often write meta-comments, but it's interesting to see the two large threads here. One of them is about whether the Fed is printing money. The other one is about what inflation is, or how it ought to be measured. I find it fascinating that there's so much confusion about all these economic terms. I don't have a simple answer to either, but it's thought provoking that there isn't an established theory that everyone can point to from which people can comfortably say what different things mean. If you had a physics debate about black holes or whatever, it would normally be quite clear if someone had misunderstood something. At least when the threads got deeper, it would become clearer and some authoritative comment would appear. I have an economics degree from a well known university, and I'm still not entirely sure what to think of those threads. They are so meandering, each new commentator rectifying an old definition or seeking to add yet another concept. That should say something about how confidently we can make economic decisions.
- marcosdumay 6y agoMonetary theory has some very well defined concepts. But those only appear on the equations, and when people go naming them they go and mix with the same names they use on unrelated discussions. And then we get some completely ridiculous things like people arguing that the Keynes return of investments apply to each investment inside an economy.
- cynicalkane 6y agoI don't think this is exactly it. One can try -- and try fruitfully, for these theories have been useful in practice -- to match 'money' and 'inflation' and 'debt', in their macro senses, to everyday experience, with the caveat that they're aggregate concepts that affect individuals and various productive activities differently, and that they (money especially) can behave a little weird. What happens instead is that people have feelings about what these concepts are supposed to mean, and then use that to make a political statement. The reason armchair- and pseudo-economists are so eager to say things like "Money is really about X" or "Money is really about the opposite of X" is they want to hijack the word 'money' and the meaning it has in the brain and turn that into politics. These confident takes are more directly engaging, whereas economic pronouncements are wonky and weird in a way that's more relatively neutral or at least not obviously political, so the gravitation is towards the bad and confusing takes.
- x87678r 6y agoInflation has been here for a while, house prices have exploded, education and healthcare are unaffordable too. Sure TVs, cars and clothes have reduced in price so now they really make a tiny impact on your budget. The real problem is CPI isn't reflecting the real world.
- skybrian 6y agoThe CPI reflects what people actually pay for and a lot of people manage not to pay current prices. Many people bought a house a long time ago so their cost is lower. Also many people went to college a long time ago and aren’t spending anything on it now. Also, many people are healthy, and if they’re not insured then they’re not paying for healthcare. This is about real people in the real world, it’s just not necessarily current prices, and it’s an average. The average experience isn’t going to be all that relevant to you if you do need to pay current prices.
- x87678r 6y agoThat's true, CPI is high for young people, CPI is low for boomers.
- lenitabinol 6y agoThis is the right answer. Inflation metrics as reported by the Fed are entirely disconnected from what the average consumer is actually facing. Higher education, housing, and healthcare costs are the biggest expenses one faces in their life and the Fed ignores these to justify money creation. Fortunately for the 1%, that money is used to buy assets mostly owned by them.
- m3kw9 6y agoThe percentage of that stimulus that stays in the hands of consumer for disposable income is what’s gonna determine if there will be inflation. The fed is betting most of that is used for paying bills and debt. Then what you get is asset inflation at the hands of businesses.
- anm89 6y agoIf anyone is interested in hearing some incredibly knowledgeable and relatively apolitical people discuss this topic check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4xcCO9v-Os&t=13s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4xcCO9v-Os&t=13s Jeff Snider is the most knowledgeable person I have ever heard speak on international monetary issues.
- alexjray 6y agoThis was very informative
- bryan0 6y agoThanks for posting this. After watching I searched for some diagrams on this process and came cross another one of George Gammon's videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLhO7tIAtoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLhO7tIAtoY). He comes off super sketchy trying to me, almost like a get rich quick salesman, but the actual information in the video seemed legit. Anyway, based on the discussions and videos, it seems like QE by itself is relatively neutral with regards to inflation. what's really important is whether the process leads to more lending, but that is largely controlled by other factors. It definitely didn't seem like QE was actually printing money though, because the govt still has to pay back the initial bond. At least that was my novice interpretation.
- anm89 6y agoYeah it took me a while to come around to Gammon, he uses a really clickbaity/scammy visual language and marketing copy to get subscribers but if you make it past that to the content, the content is mostly very high quality. The specific video you posted is one of his best. And right, the classic equation from macro 101 that sums this up is: P = ( M x V ) / Y Where price level = money supply x velocity of money / gdp Velocity is the amount of times a given dollar changes hands on average. So they are saying that if QE fed reserves never make it out into the real economy via lending or monetized fiscal policy, velocity essentially equals 0 and never affects the price level. Also on a side not, the other guy George mentions in that video Steve Van Metre is also excellent.
- aazaa 6y agoThis and most discussions about inflation lack an actual definition of the term. This leads to heated discussions that sometimes talk past each other. I suspect what the article is talking about is Core Personal Consumption Expenditures: > The Labor Department’s latest report on core consumer prices showed the index down for a third consecutive month in June for the first time since 1957. The core personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, increase 0.9% on a year-over-year basis in June, the smallest advance since December 2010. BEA reports that the index is up 1.4% YOY in August, which follows 1.1% in July and 0.9% in June: https://www.bea.gov/data/personal-consumption-expenditures-price-index https://www.bea.gov/data/personal-consumption-expenditures-p... The use of the word "unlocking" suggests a benefit to surging headline inflation, which is very strange because inflation by itself implies nothing about what the economy itself is doing. I suspect all the talk from central banks is just jawboning. It wants to raise the specter of a big bond market decline to get certain kinds of investors out of treasuries and into risk-on assets. Recent history has shown that doing that is highly stimulative.
- tigerbelt 6y agoBlip-ity bloop beep beep money ! Zoom ! More money ! Print it R2 Beep beep beep ... be boop boop beep ... this is machine comprehensible don’t hate human More money ! You are all trolls and sheep
- valuearb 6y agoIt’s not inflation exactly, because of the influence of lower interest rates, but in my neighborhood houses sold for around $250/square foot last couple years. My neighbor just sold her house for $365/square foot. There is a measure of the balance of supply vs demand where 100 is an equal number of buyers and sellers. More sellers < 100, more buyers > 100. My realtor just told me it typically bounces between 80 and 120, but right now it’s 350. She’s never seen it remotely as high.