Seven-tenths of the decade's home price gain landed after the 2021 no-bubble call

Compound the two legs and the decade comes to 54.3%: 1.16 times 1.33 is 1.5428, a shade under the more-than-55% figure the post reports ^[5]. Multiplying two rounded percentages does that. The date split matters more. Of those 54 points, 38 came from the second leg, because the 33% gain applied to a base already 16% higher ^[6]. Roughly seven-tenths of the decade's increase arrived after the spring 2021 call ^[6][2][3].

Now the seller side. Forty percent of American homeowners own their houses free and clear ^[7]. The other 60% carry a mortgage ^[8]. That group had well over a year to refinance at 3% or less before rates reached 6% ^[9][10]. Housing is the largest line item in most household budgets, and awealthofcommonsense.com says most homeowners did not want to give up those low rates ^[11]. Selling is optional for them.

Housing starts in the 2020s never got close to mid-2000s levels, and the country now holds more than 40 million additional people; overbuilding was one of the reasons the last cycle broke ^[14]. Speculation did not arrive either. The post's example is a friend who bought a rental property in 2021 and meant to keep borrowing to add more every year, then stopped at one house when rates went from 3% to 6% ^[18]. In 2006 and 2007, by the same account, buyers put very little money down and took teaser-rate loans ^[17].

Volume took the adjustment instead. Existing home sales have run for about three years at levels last seen at the depths of the mid-2000s crash ^[12]. "There wasn't a crash in prices but there was a crash in housing market activity," the post said ^[13].

The post does not put a number on affordability. Its 2021 list cited affordability being far worse in other countries ^[1], and it notes that the largest age cohort in America is people aged 33 to 37, sitting in prime homebuying years ^[16]. Two readings fit the same sales data. Either owners will not sell at 3%, or buyers cannot clear the price at 6%. The post argues the first, and rests the no-bubble verdict on lending standards, the absence of speculation and the absence of an inventory glut ^[19].

I would underwrite the volume recession here, not a price decline. Commissions, origination, title and the spending that travels with a move are all levered to transaction count, and count has sat at crash-era levels for three years while prices rose ^[12][4]. The counter-case is simple. If rate lock is what froze the market, a decline in rates releases owners and buyers at once, volume returns quickly, and affordability was a financing problem all along. What would settle it: existing sales recovering in count while prices stay flat or rise ^[12].