Deep Dive: Why Housing Costs Keep Rising

To understand why affordability looks the way it does today, you have to understand how housing became a financial instrument in the first place. And the questions only get more difficult from here...

For decades, the majority of middle-income Americans stored their wealth in their homes. In 1970, a median home cost 2.7x the median household income. By 2024, that figure reached 5.1x. Today, 62% of middle-class wealth sits in an asset that 7 in 10 American households can no longer afford. Home ownership in the U.S. is now the subject of executive orders, Senate votes, and protest movements. But most of the debate focuses on symptoms rather than the system that created them. To understand why affordability looks the way it does today, we need to understand how housing became a financial…