Priced In Gold, Is Housing A Buy?

Interesting, especially since I am in the market to buy a house. Maybe I should wait till housing dips below 70 oz. of gold. Food for thought.

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Guest Post: Priced In Gold, Is Housing A Buy?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-priced-gold-housing-buy

In terms of the median price, it took almost 600 ounces of gold to buy the median priced house in 2005.

Then housing collapsed, and gold rocketed from $500/oz to $1,500/oz. As a result of housing declining by 40% and gold tripling, the ratio has plummeted by 80%, from 500 to just above 100.

How low can the ratio go? Some might look at the second chart and conclude that the previous bottom around 90, in 1980 when gold shot up to $800/oz, might well mark a bottom in the ratio.

Those who believe that 90 is the bottom would then sell their gold and buy housing at that point. Since the ratio is currently at 110, that point is still a ways off.

I am not so sure, as there is plentiful evidence that we are entering an unprecedented era.

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Even if housing stays at current prices, if gold triples to $4,500 an ounce, then the housing-gold ratio would fall to the 30s: $160,000 divided by $4,500 = 35.

If housing declines another 25% to a median of $120,000, then it would take a mere 27 ounces of gold to buy a median-priced house.

There are certainly good arguments (usually based on replacement costs) that housing can't possibly fall much lower, but oversupply and higher costs of money may well combine to push the speculative value of housing to new lows.

This is all speculation and guesswork, of course. All we can do is look at trends and study history for clues about what might happen. What will happen is unknown.

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z