Oz silver/house ratio

[Engineer]

Looking at the following charts, it appears US housing is undervalued by nearly 50% compared to silver these days, but UK housing is close to its historical norm. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

http://www.sharelynx.com/chartstemp/USHLSPOG.php

[slvrbck]

That's the beauty of charts. Everyone can read them differently. Looks more to me like US housing was overvalued by roughly 50% over the last twenty years and we are now closer to a longer term average.

[68Camaro]

Personally can't really make anything terribly useful out of it.

a) It doesn't go back far enough to be meaningful, as far as PM prices.

b) A "house" isn't really a standard thing, especially over the past 100 years. And the differences between the US and UK are apples and oranges. I don't know what they considered in this graph, but in practice...

In US, 50 years ago a typical house might have been 1200 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, no A/C, no dishwasher, washer (maybe) and the dryer was a clothesline. Nowadays that would be considered unacceptable, too substandard even for welfare recipients. (That may be changing, but hasn't yet.)

In contrast, in the UK the expectations for living have declined precipitously over the past 50-100 years after they effectively lost two world wars. (They "won", but destroyed two generations and all their accumulated wealth in the process.) An acceptable abode there is now a flat in a carved-up former house that totals maybe 500-800 sq ft. (Of course small flats can be made to work, thus the appeal of IKEA, but they have become used to having to do with less.)

[Sheikh_yer_Bu'Tay]

Not what I was expecting. I was expecting the price of a house (or any other commodity) to be level in terms of gold. As 68Camero said, the "average" US house has changed dramatically in the past 50 years. Housing is subject to so many different mood swings effecting supply & demand.

Is there another commodity you can do a comparison with? The Mogambo Guru once wrote about how a loaf of bread to price in gold ratio had stayed pretty much the same since the Roman Empire.

[IdahoCopper]

So how long has the price of silver been manipulated? How can you get the truth out of a rigged data set?

GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. The chart is meaningless.

[reddirtcoins]

Personally can't really make anything terribly useful out of it.

In US, 50 years ago a typical house might have been 1200 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, no A/C, no dishwasher, washer (maybe) and the dryer was a clothesline. Nowadays that would be considered unacceptable, too substandard even for welfare recipients. (That may be changing, but hasn't yet.)

How did you know where I grew up..?
Really, I remember when the temp was 95 and all we had in our house was a box fan. We had the 4 line poles in the back. (mostly on base) Heck even in school you opened the window. I see no problem going back to it. I think that is where everyone is heading.

[Thogey]

Personally can't really make anything terribly useful out of it.

In US, 50 years ago a typical house might have been 1200 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, no A/C, no dishwasher, washer (maybe) and the dryer was a clothesline. Nowadays that would be considered unacceptable, too substandard even for welfare recipients. (That may be changing, but hasn't yet.)

How did you know where I grew up..?
Really, I remember when the temp was 95 and all we had in our house was a box fan. We had the 4 line poles in the back. (mostly on base) Heck even in school you opened the window. I see no problem going back to it. I think that is where everyone is heading.

My house: no dishwasher, no AC, no cable TV, clothsline in the back, (except for our beds) no soft furniture like lazy boy couch etc. I could sell silver and buy these things. But I don't want to reduce my silver to house ratio

[Rodebaugh]

No AC in AZ.... Thats like no heat in Alaska.

[fasteddy]

We know Thogey uses live critters for pest control...so how deep does your cave go? Do you have your own underground river/spring....?

[Thogey]

I live in the high country. We break 100 maybe 5 days each summer. Since the air is thin here the temp drops 30, 40 sometimes 50 degrees at night. I'd rather keep my silver than become a squishy, soft typical American.

Back on topic though. I think Camaro's response was right. Compared to 50 years ago houses are really extravagant and people are no happier now than they were.

I'm going to need my silver to buy beer when I can no longer work or to fly to China so I can buy a political prisoner's fresh, healthy liver.

[Thogey]

We know Thogey uses live critters for pest control...so how deep does your cave go? Do you have your own underground river/spring....?

Yeah. The underground river flows across by backyard into my septic tank. The spring comes out the end of a hose that leads to a washing machine.

[SilverDragon72]

Personally can't really make anything terribly useful out of it.

In US, 50 years ago a typical house might have been 1200 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, no A/C, no dishwasher, washer (maybe) and the dryer was a clothesline. Nowadays that would be considered unacceptable, too substandard even for welfare recipients. (That may be changing, but hasn't yet.)

How did you know where I grew up..?
Really, I remember when the temp was 95 and all we had in our house was a box fan. We had the 4 line poles in the back. (mostly on base) Heck even in school you opened the window. I see no problem going back to it. I think that is where everyone is heading.

Yep. Same here. We grew up in similar conditions....although we had a washer/dryer in addition to the clothesline. Funny thing is, my folks STILL don't have AC I'm not sure why, but why should someone consider suffering? In order to save some "pennies?" To each their own, I suppose. We made do with what we had.

[68Camaro]

How did you know where I grew up..?
Really, I remember when the temp was 95 and all we had in our house was a box fan. We had the 4 line poles in the back. (mostly on base) Heck even in school you opened the window. I see no problem going back to it. I think that is where everyone is heading.

Well, because, really - that's was truly the typical house in the 1950-60s, at least in the fly-over country I grew up in. We considered ourselves fortunate, and with a good standard of living. We had a party line. A 12-inch B&W TV that got (maybe, on a good day) 3 channels. We knew we had really arrived when the city built a community pool. That was EVERYONE I knew. Oh, a few in the country had a bit less. And the truly "rich" in the town had a 19 inch color TV, two cars, A/C in the house and the cars, and their own washer/dryer instead of having to go to the laudromat. Nowadays, almost everyone would have been considered "rich", back then.

[dannan14]

Personally can't really make anything terribly useful out of it.

In US, 50 years ago a typical house might have been 1200 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, no A/C, no dishwasher, washer (maybe) and the dryer was a clothesline. Nowadays that would be considered unacceptable, too substandard even for welfare recipients. (That may be changing, but hasn't yet.)

How did you know where I grew up..?
Really, I remember when the temp was 95 and all we had in our house was a box fan. We had the 4 line poles in the back. (mostly on base) Heck even in school you opened the window. I see no problem going back to it. I think that is where everyone is heading.

Hehe, i never left it. i hate air conditioning. Right now i'm living in an apartment, so no clothes line, but over the last 10 years most of the time i've used free energy to dry my clothes.

[Bluegill]

I can look at the chart and see that housing is still over priced and Ag is undervalued here in the U.S.

[Sheba]

When I was a kid back in the '50s', we didn't have TV, AC, or a dryer. We did have a washing machine and a special room in the basement where the coal was dumped for the winter time (it could get down around 20-25 below for a couple weeks).

I never remember being terribly uncomfortable, though I spent a lot of my 'kid' years in the community swimming pool in the summer.

Now, however, I don't think my dear wife and I could exist (specially this year) without AC and all the other goodies mentioned.

The poorest of us are pretty rich (I don't consider us 'rich' by US standards at all ... living on a small fixed retirement income), but when I hear missionaries in our church talk about what is normal, for instance, in India, I feel very, very rich! And I think a huge segment of the Indian population (as well as other such countries) would consider even the poorest in the US, very rich.

I'll keep handsorting those pennies....one at a time probably!

[Market Harmony]

Looking at the following charts, it appears US housing is undervalued by nearly 50% compared to silver these days, but UK housing is close to its historical norm. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

http://www.sharelynx.com/chartstemp/USHLSPOG.php

Might have something to do with demographics... i.e. the Baby Boomer Generation being able to afford housing. You can see how: just when they are beginning to come to a point where their income is increasing and they are creating families, that this particular point in time is when the prices of housing begins to increase... And 20-30 years later, when they are retiring and downsizing households, that this particular time is when the prices of housing returns to normalcy.

I dunno, I'm a dunce when it comes to these things