By Nick Timiraos | The Wall Street Journal
The National Association of Realtors‘ monthly home sales report made a big splash last week with news that median home prices in June had broken the record set in 2006 at the peak of the housing bubble, reaching a nominal high of $236,400.
Does this mean we have another problem on our hands? Not really.
Median home prices—that is, the midpoint of sales, where half of homes sell above and half sell below the given price—can be a very clumsy gauge for comparing prices over time. First, median prices aren’t typically adjusted for inflation. All else equal, median home prices should set “new records” every summer as long as there is inflation.
