The Great Decoupling
In 1971, a house in the average American metro cost 3.5 years of the average worker’s salary.
Today it costs 7.9.
You just scrolled through the problem.
metro-level price ÷ income · case-shiller vs median salary
Act I — United States, 1970–2026 · OECD data
Now look at the official number.
US house prices divided by household income, rebased to 1970 = 100. By this measure, housing today is almost exactly as affordable as in 1970. The line cycles — bubbles, crashes, recoveries — and returns to where it started.
But you opened this story with a house costing 3.5 → 7.9 years of salary. Both numbers are true. The national average blends Detroit and San Francisco, Cagliari and Milan, into one figure that describes neither. Measure price the way buyers experience it — the metros where people actually compete for homes — and the flat line breaks:
national average
7.0 → 7.0 yrs
OECD ratio, 1970 → 2025
what buyers face
3.5 → 7.9 yrs
metro-level price ÷ income (Case-Shiller)
The average is a mask. The next act takes it off — country by country, with the same algorithm, no anecdotes.
Act II — 24 markets, one pattern · OECD data
The divorce wasn’t simultaneous.
Every OECD country whose house-price-to-income ratio broke sustainably above its own trend — stamped with the year the algorithm detected it. Read the dates before you read the text.
Spain
1987Australia
1988Netherlands
1993Denmark
1997Ireland
1998Norway
1999United Kingdom
2000Sweden
2001Belgium
2002France
2003Italy
2003New Zealand
2003South Africa
2003Canada
2004Colombia
2009Switzerland
2010Israel
2010Austria
2011Chile
2015Luxembourg
2015Germany
2016Portugal
2018United States
2020Slovenia
2022What the dates say
median detachment year across 24 markets
11 of 24 markets detached within a 8-year window (1997–2004) — different continents, different tax codes, different politics. Ireland and Spain crashed and re-divorced; Germany stayed married until 2016. This wasn't one bubble. It was a chain reaction synced to global interest rates.
Act III — the mechanism
The monthly payment never changed.
Freeze a household’s mortgage budget at $2,000/month. Scroll through the interest-rate era and watch what house that same payment buys.
Mortgage rate · 1981
16.6%
Volcker shock — inflation killed with 18% money
Buys a house of
$144k
payment = price × rate → when the rate term collapses, the price term must inflate to fill the same payment.
Borrowing power was sold as affordability. It wasn't. It was the price going up.
Act III — continued
Then the trap closed.
In 2022 the rates went back up. Logic says prices fall to match. They didn't — because of who owns the homes.
2021 · rate 2.7%
$493k
what $2,000/mo bought. Millions of owners locked this rate in.
2025 · rate 6.8%
$307k
what the same payment buys today. Selling means trading a 2.7% mortgage for a 6.8% one — so nobody sells.
−47%
existing-home sales from the 2021 peak — inventory frozen
≈3×
more owners locked below 4% than above it
0
corrections in nominal prices nationally, 2022–2025
The escape hatch was welded shut — from the inside.
Act IV — the generational ledger
Who paid for this?
The gap didn't fall evenly. It was paid in delay — by the people who hadn't bought yet.
Median first-time buyer age
then (early 1980s) → now. Sorted by how far retirement moved.
The first-time buyer is now closer to 40 than to 25 in most advanced markets. In Germany, Seoul, and Hong Kong, closer to 45.
US: share of 25–34s who own
Every point is ~450,000 younger households who don't own.
First-time buyers using family money
family money now the largest single "lender" in several markets. Which compounds the gap for everyone without it.
The market didn't price houses out of reach for the young. It priced them out of reach for anyone whose parents hadn't already bought — and made inheritance the entry ticket.
Act V — the system closes
The loop that feeds itself.
years to save
a 20% deposit:
14 yrs
- 1. Prices detach from income
- 2. Ownership out of reach
- 3. More people must rent
- 4. Rental demand rises
- 5. Rents rise
- 6. Deposit takes longer to save
- 7. Ownership further away ↺
Each pass of the loop, the deposit horizon stretches. The system doesn't break — it reproduces itself.
And for those who do buy: the debt.
Same $2,000/month for 30 years. What the price of the house was — and how much of what you hand the bank is the house at all.
402% of the house price goes to the bank as interest
219% of the house price goes to the bank as interest
111% of the house price goes to the bank as interest
52% of the house price goes to the bank as interest
130% of the house price goes to the bank as interest
Buy at 2.7% and the house is mostly yours. Buy at 18% and you mostly bought a debt. The rate era you were born into decided which.
Finale — the number, everywhere
One number. Every market. Run your cursor over the map.
Years of median household income to buy a median dwelling. The counter you scrolled through in the beginning — scaled to the world.
In 1971 it was 3.5 years.
Now it's a map.
Built with live OECD data (40 countries) and FRED mortgage rates, processed by the pipeline in data/. Every number here is reproducible — see data/README.md.