Median price of a house in the USA

Median price of a house in the USA

Reading the above article tells us that the median price for a house in
the USA this year is $238,100. The US Census informs me the median
price of a house in the USA in 2000 was $119,600. That comes to a 99%
increase in five years. Which, is about 20% increase per year.

The same 5 years has seen oil and gasoline increase by 100 to 200%.

Yet the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) told us that we only had a CPI
increase last month of just over 1/10th of one percent. They also
claim our yearly inflation hasn't exceeded 2% in several years.

Does anyone here think our government would lie to us ? I'd hate to
think I was the only one :-)

Tom in Macon...

The only fair comparsion is to compare the same house in 2000 and the one in
2006. Americans are buying larger homes now and also buying them for
speculative purposes. In this area of the US, a $238K home would be a top
of the line home and far above average.

Jerry Okamura...

No. You are taking one part of what makes up the CPI and extrapolating that
part to represent the CPI. The CPI as I recall is a weighed average of maNy
items, some will rise above the CPI and others will rise less than the CPI.

Here is the defintion for the BLS of what the CPI is, "The Consumer Price
Indexes (CPI) program produces monthly data on changes in the prices paid by
urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services."