UBS released some interesting research last month on how much gold it takes to buy the average-priced home in the U.S. I put the data to a chart, and it’s quite revealing.
What’s interesting is that as much as house prices have fallen and as much as gold has risen, today’s ratio is still above the historical average. You can see we’re at the same number today as 1970, and yet look where it was 10 years later when gold peaked.
What’s interesting is that as much as house prices have fallen and as much as gold has risen, today’s ratio is still above the historical average. You can see we’re at the same number today as 1970, and yet look where it was 10 years later when gold peaked.
Here’s another interesting observation: the ratio was 100 during both high inflation (1980) and high deflation (1930). The connection between house prices and gold prices during economic extremes seems awfully compelling.
So, if gold peaks and real estate bottoms in about five years, then a house will cost you about 100 ounces of gold in 2015. Maybe it will take ten years, but the point is, I think we can count on the ratio moving lower this decade, and probably significantly so. Even for the modest budget, 100 ounces almost sounds manageable.
100 oz of gold in todays numbers would be about $120,000. I see it much worse, like $12-15,000 for a house in the next 5-7 years.
ReplyDelete2:51 At $12,000 a house means that
ReplyDelete100oz of Gold would buy 10 houses.
300 ounces for a house today? I may be wrong here but the average home price is nowhere near $300,000 today.
ReplyDelete