Here's the long version of what it means. But in short, it basically measures how affordable housing is. The higher, the more affordable housing is. The lower, the worse, as housing becomes less and less affordable.
Well, the index has been plummeting as short term interest rates (and long term ones as well) increase, not to mention all the ARM/Reverse Amort. yahoos flooding the market with money they shouldn't have been loaned in the first place has tended to drive prices sky high.
This here's the chart for the nation, unfortunately the NAR is stingy with their data and they don't have monthly data for 2003-2005 (they do, they just don't release it)
Fortunately I found a decent proxy here for the local market, giving you a better idea of the rate at which houses are becoming less and less affordable.
It's a sad day when a realtor admits there might be a bubble.
Cap'n, what do you think of the Austrian school and their theory of the business cycle?
ReplyDeleteI just found a great working paper on the housing bubble here:
http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Thornton13.pdf
Lemme know what you think.
Hey Josh,
ReplyDeleteIt's literally been about 13 years since I attended the Ludwig Von Mises institute and outside a general udnerstanding that they're very free-market, borderline arnachists, I couldn't remember their theory on business cycles.
That being said, I without reading it or freshening up on it, they were usually spot on.