The Overinflated Fear of Being Priced Out of Housing

Robert Shiller:

The Overinflated Fear of Being Priced Out of Housing: Rising home prices set off fears that real estate will become even more expensive, making it impossible ever to buy a home in a given city.

It’s easy to understand how such worries spread, but the historical record suggests that these fears are generally exaggerated. ...

There is another wrinkle, however. Demand lately has tilted toward homes in central cities, where land is scarce, rather than in more spacious distant suburbs. This creates imbalances. ... While living space is constrained in the heart of large, high-priced cities like New York, builders elsewhere have usually been able to accommodate people’s demands for cheap large homes roughly where they want them. ...

Given these facts, why do people still worry that home prices are getting out of reach? The answer can’t be found in the housing data. Instead, these fears may reflect anxieties about other issues — like income inequality, globalization and the threat of job losses because of robots and artificial intelligence. In prosperous cities, rising prices may connote economic exclusion.

After all, American society is increasingly divided according to educational attainment and income. In some circles, rarefied home prices may set off worries about being unable to live in choice locations shared with successful people. Home prices may, unfortunately, be viewed as a measurement of success in life rather than merely of floor space, and fear of being priced out of housing may well be rooted in deeper broodings about maintaining a position in the social hierarchy.