Global Financial Data has put together a data series covering seven centuries of real estate prices. The series covers real estate costs in Great Britain from 1290 to the current day.
How did we do this? Unfortunately, there was no Ye Olde Zillow Real Estate Co. that had stayed in business for seven centuries and allowed us to analyze their records, but instead we spliced together several long-term series to create this index. The data from 1290 to 1894 is actually based upon the rental costs of housing rather than actual housing prices since rental data was the only information that was available. The data from 1895 to date is based upon actual housing costs using series put together by the Bank of England and the Nationwide Building Society.
A Plague on Your Houses!
According to this index, the average house which cost around £200,000 in 2016 (obviously, the index isn’t limited to London), cost about £50 in 1290 and £16 in 1360. There was a general increase in prices during the inflation of the late 1500s and early 1600s when gold and silver from the Americas flooded Europe and the rest of the world, expanding the money supply and raising prices.
A second inflation occurred during the Napoleonic Wars when Britain went off the gold standard, and of course the largest increase in housing prices occurred after World War II when Britain suffered its worst inflation in history.
A Wife’s Home Is Her Castle
Although housing prices have not increased as fast as equity prices, housing has still have been a good investment over the past 75 years, and will probably continue to be in years to come. What is true for England is probably true for the rest of the world. Restrictions on increasing the housing supply have contributed to the scarcity of housing in Britain and thus higher prices, but there is no reason to believe that this will change. Unless a wave of zombies spreads a new plague through Britain, housing prices will probably continue to increase faster than inflation for years to come.
