Bill McBride made a great summary graphic showing how house prices in each Case-Shiller city have fared over the past 13 years. Everything is scaled relative to the price in January 2000. The red line shows how much higher than that prices went at the peak, the blue line shows how much lower they got during the trough, and the orange line is where we are today.
It’s worth noting that whatever you want to call this phenomenon of swinging prices, it works in both directions. It’s fashionable to worry about bubbles these days, but you equally well see evidence of anti-bubbles and strong bounce-back.
Correction: An earlier version of this post featured some remarks about D.C.-area house prices that were based on misreading the chart. Today’s prices in the Washington area are 97 percent higher (in nominal terms) than they were in 2000, not 97 percent of the 2000 level, as I originally thought.
