Chart of the Day

For some perspective into the all-important US real estate market, today's chart illustrates the US median price of a single-family home over the past 38 years. Thanks, in part, to low long-term interest rates, the trend from 1991 to 2005 was impressive. Not only did housing prices increase at a rapid rate, the rate at which housing prices increased - increased. That brings us to today's chart which illustrates how housing prices have dropped well below their accelerated upward trend. In fact, nearly half (48.9%) of the 1991 to 2005 gains have been erased in slightly less than three years.