tl;dr Cheaper credit and inflation. The monthly payments today are actually 40% lower on an inflation adjusted basis. Only the down payment is more expensive, b

tl;dr Cheaper credit and inflation. The monthly payments today are actually 40% lower on an inflation adjusted basis. Only the down payment is more expensive, by 30% after inflation. I’m going to go with 1990 for a specific date. According to their source, house prices have gone up 2.6x since then. In 1990 the prevailing mortgage interest rate was a little over 10%. Today its about 3%. For a house that costs the exact same amount, the payments today are 2.1x less. Conversely, the same payments today let you afford a house that costs 2.1x more. Additionally, as far as I can tell, that figure isn’t adjusted for inflation, which is 1.99x since 1990. Combining inflation and more affordable payments, an equally affordable house would today cost 4.2x what it did in 1990. Seeing “only” a 2.6x increase, the inflation adjusted monthly mortgage payments are almost 40% lower today. For the down payment, however, the easy credit doesn’t help you, only the inflation, so a median inflation adjusted down payment is still 30% more expensive today. That’s my best guess for macro explanation. Cheaper credit and inflation.