9. The median household family income is not keeping up with rising costs for things like housing, cars, education and healthcare. This is partly due to rising divorce and unemployment rates and the ongoing collapsing purchasing power of the dollar.
For example, let’ s compare income and expense data dating back to 1970, which was just one year before President Nixon removed our dollar from the gold standard and inflation skyrocketed, while our purchasing power imploded over the past 50 + years.
The median US household income increased from $ 10,000 in 1970 up to $ 106,000 in 2025, which was an increase of 10x( or 10 times). Please note that this is household income, which may include multiple income sources from the adult occupants.
While the rising household income was a positive, the negatives were as follows during that same 1970 to 2025 timespan:
• Median US home prices rose from $ 25,000 to $ 445,000( double this amount in California), which was an increase of 17x.
• Median car prices jumped from $ 3,600 to almost $ 50,000, which was an increase of 14x.
• The median college price rose from $ 2,900 per year to $ 45,000, an increase of 16x.
• The average costs of healthcare per person skyrocketed from $ 350 to $ 14,600 per year, which was a massive increase of 42x.
Source: The Finance Newsletter
Positive Housing and Economic Trends
1. More than 40 % of owneroccupied singlefamily homes are now owned freeandclear with no mortgage debt. Homeowners with no debt are much more likely to not sell at hefty future discounted prices because many of these homeowners, or their heirs, can just sit back and wait for the housing market to strengthen again.
2. Large billion and trilliondollar corporations like BlackRock, Vanguard( largest BlackRock shareholder), Blackstone( a BlackRock spinoff and the world’ s largest commercial real estate owner) continue to purchase both residential and commercial real estate.
3. An increasing number of foreign buyers from places like China, Japan, and India keep purchasing US real estate. As per this linked video from the Econofin team, there’ s potentially a $ 56 billion dollar cash buyer invasion from foreign investors( a + 44 % foreign investor percentage surge) that is keeping real estate demand steady in many US regions.
4. The ongoing“ shadow inventory” of distressed residential and commercial real estate properties and mortgages, which includes the estimated alltime record high 12 %+ of all FHA loans that are currently delinquent and trillions of dollars’ worth of ballooning commercial mortgages, are continued to be delayed via“ extend and pretend” strategies or silently being sold off to huge investment
Homeowners with no debt are much more likely to not sell at hefty future discounted prices because many of these homeowners, or their heirs, can just sit back and wait for the housing market to strengthen again. funds. As a result, these strategies are
artificially suppressing the residential and commercial real estate inventories that may keep values at least flat instead of rapidly declining.
5. Both shortterm and longterm rates are expected to keep falling in 2026. Lower rates make home purchases more affordable for an increasing number of buyers. Mark Zandi, the wellknown Moody’ s Analytics economist, forecasts at least three rate cuts in 2026 as shared in this recent CNBC article.
6. Existinghome sales are projected to rise by around 14 % in 2026, according to the National Association of Realtors( NAR) Chief Economist Lawrence Yun, partly due to lower rates and increasing home listings for sale.
7. The dollar is more likely to keep falling in 2026 which, in turn, should push asset values higher like we saw in 2025 with these asset gains:
• S & P 500: + 16.65 %
• Nasdaq 100: + 20.14 %
• Dow Jones: + 13.40 %
• Russell 2000: + 11.31 %
• Gold: + 61.48 %
• Silver: + 139.21 %
Source: The Market Hustle
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