There’s always something to howl about.

Until there is a brokerage counter at Wal-Mart, there is no real estate bubble

Ever wonder about the relationship between gold and real estate?

Jim Klein got me to thinking about a “store of wealth”, when I postulated that there is no gold bubble:

I think people can get snookered into thinking it’s a great “investment.” It’s protection, it’s barter; it’s a store of wealth. To me, that’s not what “investment” means, which is usually about income. I believe that in actual inflation periods, gold tends to appreciate on the low side, particularly when compared with many other assets. It does much better /anticipating/ inflation, as now.

I remembered hearing that term before, over on Seeking Alpha:

Gold and Real Estate have historically been the two ways to store real value as they are as real assets as you get. So what happens when the value of one real asset is artificially manipulated? We all know by now what caused the bubble in real estate, but, at the height of the bubble it was unknown to the market that it was a bubble on the verge of bursting

Real estate does have income-producing value though, as Sean Purcell pointed out to us years ago.  Also, the median-priced home is larger today than it was 40 years ago, because of change in retail demand.  Still, for fun, let’s compare the median price of a single-family home, in August, 1971 ($25,300) to the price of a single-family home, in February, 2011 ($202,100), in ounces of gold:

On August 1, 1971, the price of gold was pegged at $35/oz so it would have taken 722 ounces of gold to purchase a median-priced, single-family home.  Two weeks later, The United States terminated its participation in The Bretton Woods Agreement, creating a fiat currency.

At the end of February, 2011, you might have paid $1,400/oz for gold.  You could purchase a median-priced, single family home then for 144 ounces of gold, about one-fifth the cost (in gold), from 1971.

What I’m missing here is the net operating income you would have derived from that single-family home, over the 40-year period.  I’d have to know what the rents were for each year, the property taxes and costs for fire insurance, maintenance, etc..  I suppose we could assume 1% of the value of the home for monthly rents, adjust it each year to the median-price, and deduct 25% of that income for taxes, maintenance, and expenses.

One of the great reasons to purchase real estate is that you can leverage it.  If we could assume that you purchased that home, in 1971, with just 20% down payment, financed the rest, and the rents covered the financing costs and expenses, and amortized the loan for you, we could say that you only paid 144 ounces of gold then, for 144 ounces of gold today but…

…you could live in that house today. Real estate then might be a real bargain today and, until they have a home brokerage counter in Wal-Mart, there is no bubble in real estate.

Oh…wait.