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Higher Rates


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2010 Oct 4, 3:37pm   978 views  1 comment

by HousingBoom   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

If inflation picks up again like it did in 1981, what will home prices do when rates jump up to 18% again? I would think it would collapse. For inflation to lift home prices, I would think that wages need to increase to make that happen. With the job losses and down economy, I don't see wages going up in the next few years.

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1   nope   2010 Oct 4, 5:04pm  

You aren't going to have inflation of everything *but* housing.

If history is any indication, inflation would result in house prices going up, even if interest rates are high.

In 1980, mortages were 12%, inflation was 14%, unemployment was 8%, and house prices went up by 6.5%.
In 1983, mortgages were 12%, inflation was 3%, unemployment was 10%, and house prices went up by 6%.

Inflation had little to do with housing prices.

You can't really make any conclusions about these things in the short term. Over the long term, housing roughly tracks inflation, and only fails to do so during periods where interest rates are artificially low (hello real estate bubble!) or artificially high.

That said, you simply aren't going to see inflation happening. Inflation is only going to happen if you have too many dollars chasing too few goods.

What are the "too few goods" being chased? There is a glut of housing inventory, a glut of food, and a massive glut of just about everything else, thanks to Chinese production.

You might be able to trigger inflation by creating an artificial resource shortage, but that would be really hard without cutting off oil production, and right now nobody really has any incentive to cut off oil production (like they did in the late 70s).

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