No, it hasn't always been; you're conflating historically consistent and reasonable cycles with the speculative manias that have occurred over the past two decades. Make no mistake: we are not in a normal cycle.
Prior to these bubbles, the next closest historical US analog over a century would have been the rebuilding that occurred after WWII, when home prices reverted back to inflation-adjusted fair value after the housing market was completely hammered by the onset of the Great Depression---a time when ballon payment mortgages were the norm, and a crisis that gave rise to the financial innovation of fixed-rate mortgages as the de facto US standard circa 1930s. This spike in home prices was largely attributable to a bona fide housing shortage (think Baby Boomers)...yet no speculative mania and no bubble arose over those decades.
To get a sense for just how ridiculous today's real estate market has become, you need to consider the situation in real (inflation-adjusted) terms[1]. No amount of contrived marketing can quantitatively justify today's egregious bubble home prices, whether it's relative to building costs (!!), population growth, or decreasing interest rates as shown in the graph, or relative to other meaningful metrics that aren't shown like increasing real disposable income or tax-advantaged benefits of the asset class.
For reference, Robert Shiller covers this topic well in his book Irrational Exuberance[2].
On a similar note to your parent post, the UK is looking quite dire as well. Interest rates aren't as high (yet), and although both countries have a strong bias towards adjustable-rate mortgages, I suspect the key difference is in the demographic of bag holders: for the UK, I'm specifically looking at fixed-income pensioners. When the first wave of adjustments kick in next year, it's going to break a lot of people with little to no financial alternative.
No, it hasn't always been; you're conflating historically consistent and reasonable cycles with the speculative manias that have occurred over the past two decades. Make no mistake: we are not in a normal cycle.
Prior to these bubbles, the next closest historical US analog over a century would have been the rebuilding that occurred after WWII, when home prices reverted back to inflation-adjusted fair value after the housing market was completely hammered by the onset of the Great Depression---a time when ballon payment mortgages were the norm, and a crisis that gave rise to the financial innovation of fixed-rate mortgages as the de facto US standard circa 1930s. This spike in home prices was largely attributable to a bona fide housing shortage (think Baby Boomers)...yet no speculative mania and no bubble arose over those decades.
To get a sense for just how ridiculous today's real estate market has become, you need to consider the situation in real (inflation-adjusted) terms[1]. No amount of contrived marketing can quantitatively justify today's egregious bubble home prices, whether it's relative to building costs (!!), population growth, or decreasing interest rates as shown in the graph, or relative to other meaningful metrics that aren't shown like increasing real disposable income or tax-advantaged benefits of the asset class.
For reference, Robert Shiller covers this topic well in his book Irrational Exuberance[2].
On a similar note to your parent post, the UK is looking quite dire as well. Interest rates aren't as high (yet), and although both countries have a strong bias towards adjustable-rate mortgages, I suspect the key difference is in the demographic of bag holders: for the UK, I'm specifically looking at fixed-income pensioners. When the first wave of adjustments kick in next year, it's going to break a lot of people with little to no financial alternative.
[1] http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data/ShillerHPI.jpg
[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691173125/