But is buying in this climate a good idea? Bidding wars, sight unseen inspections. Maybe the prices won't go back to what they ere in 2029 (well, for sure they wont).. but that doesn't mean it can't cool off.
Yeah I agree about counting against the US econony... but the US just doesn't feel like it used to. Doesn't feel like we're in a great spot. Two giant recessions since 2008, China, geopolitical issues, stagnant wages. I can't pretend to know all this stuff extremely well, but I don't get the sense that I, as a 34 year old, will ever experience something like the 90s again.
My take on the economy at large is this. We spent the last 30 years onboarding China, India, and South America onto the world economy. The only continent left to onboard is Africa. There aren't enough people in Africa to meaningfully depress wage growth in the entire rest of the world. Population is also starting to recede in developed countries. Wage growth had a bad 30 years, but it is about to have a very solid decade or more, especially in the US.
Why in the US? Our biggest generation is still the Baby Boomers and they are retiring which means in the office world a lot of folks are going to be promoted over the next decade. In the services sector Boomers are going to use a lot of services and provide none so there is going to be a huge demand for people to serve others. We're already starting to see it. $15/hour is the new normal wage whether it becomes a national minimum or not. Employers of high school grads are going to have to pay that to get someone decent and keep them.
Aside from that we are in the middle of a huge transition from fossil to renewable energy and from an office society to a remote society. Both of those are going to destroy some old business models and provide some new businesses a lot of opportunity for growth.
The government is also going to continue to be supportive of the economy through low taxes and support for the poor. That money all circulates to all of us, especially the money that goes into the hands of lower income folks. They spend it all.
As for buying a house? Maybe you can wait a few months and materials costs will lower, but they're going to bottom out somewhere higher than they were pre-pandemic and then rise steadily at the pace of inflation. That's a timing game and if markets were easy to time we would all be rich.
As for the 90's again. You ain't seen nothing like what the 20's are going to be barring some new geopolitical crisis or pandemic. In the US the big problem we are going to see is continued random acts of violence. Politicians and their media propoganda vehicles are cornering people on the internet and turning them into angry people who think they world is against them. I expect this to continue to cause a lot of random acts of violence over the next decade. I'm just not confident we can change that and keep the 1st amendment intact so it's probably something we just have to live with.