The Future of the Housing: Industry Median Home Prices
September 11,
2015 by in Current, General 
This is the fifth in a series of six Factoids exploring the future of the Housing Industry. The housing market has picked up steam over the last two years in terms of both existing home sales and new housing starts and a shift in the demographics of available homebuyers should spur more growth in the next 10 to 20 years.
As Millennials age into their home buying years, the question will become, “Will they be able to afford a home?” Housing prices and apartment rental rates have been on a spiraling upward trend in many parts of the country. If rates continue to grow faster than wages, buyers and renters will be facing housing’s ever-growing demand on their incomes which in turn impacts their ability to not only buy furniture, but all consumer goods and services.
This Factoid shows the rising cost of home prices from 2002 to 2014. At the peak of the housing bubble in 2007, the median price of a home was $244,950. With the subsequent housing market crash, the price fell 12 percent to $215,650 at the bottom of the recession in 2009. Since 2009, housing prices have climbed dramatically higher than pre-Great Recession days – up 32 percent in 2014 at $284,825. Median home prices have increased an average of 8.2 percent a year since 2011.
In the next and final factoid of this series, we will take a look at the rising cost of rent for Millennials.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau