Dave Heil wrote:
Dennis Ferguson wrote:
If you look at this one

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housi.../q303tab5.html

you'll see that the rate of home ownership in the US, which varied
between 63% and 66% for the 30 years prior to 1995, took a jump starting
in about 1997 and was at 68.4% in the quarter just ended. It seems
hard to argue that houses have gotten less affordable over the long
term when the fraction of people who demonstrate they can afford
to own a house by doing so remained fairly constant for so long and
actually took a significant upturn in the last few years.

I don't think it hard to argue at all, Dennis. Years back, people were
advised not to spend more than 25% of their income on housing. Later
this was revised to 33%. Today it is not uncommon for folks with two
incomes paying *half* of their combined income for housing.

That's very true, but my strong bias towards arguments which can be
supported by existence proofs requires me to argue that the fraction of
one's income spent on housing which is "affordable" isn't necessarily
a fixed number, but instead depends on the fraction of one's income that
doesn't need to be spent on everything else one requires to live. The
fact that those people ended up in houses despite the chunk of income
this took says to me the chunk was still affordable, though at that
level of investment it would be sad if the value of the house dropped.

In my area, houses are being given away and property taxes are very low.
Wait until you're near retirement before buying here though. You have
to bring your own money.

I noticed that. In fact at one point in my life I noticed that I
could swap a townhouse in Arlington, VA just about even for nearly
half a mountain, in a pricier end of your state at that, and came
very close to doing something about it. It was only the conclusion
that the commute to work in northern Virginia would kill me, even
if I didn't do it every day, which kept me in the townhouse.

Dennis Ferguson