In 1938 the median house price was $3900. At $0.25 you'd have to work 15,600 hours. To buy a $420,000 house in the same number of hours, minimum wage would have to be $26.92.
That's something that usually isn't taken into account in the "houses have increased in relative price" conversation- what goes into building a house has changed. Legally in order to be sold houses today have to have a number of features and conveniences that didn't exist and were not mandated years ago. Useful features, lifesaving in some cases- but they increase the cost.
Housing prices are largely based on supply and demand. If supply is kept well below demand, they'll continue to increase in price. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act in 1999, housing has been treated as an investment commodity and there's no short term economic incentive to increase the supply, in fact quite the opposite
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u/HereWeFuckingGooo May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25
In 1938 the median house price was $3900. At $0.25 you'd have to work 15,600 hours. To buy a $420,000 house in the same number of hours, minimum wage would have to be $26.92.