Past Recessions and Home Prices
The drop in median home prices in 1979, 1981, 1990 and 2000 are hard to miss. Not because they were especially large but because home prices rarely ever decline. Since the 1960s, median U.S. home prices have mostly marched higher and higher with a few small hiccups — making those pre-recession dips in 1990 and 2000 hard to ignore.
In fact, that faith in the reliability of rising home prices played a major role in causing the financial crisis. Many of the investment bankers trying to determine how risky their mortgage-backed securities were were operating with data that showed decades of consistent growth.
