Prices are a messy, noisy, headline-hogging matter of the moment, no?

At every turn, supply disruptions running the gamut of commodities – raw, refined, human, and inanimate – have cropped up, complicating the collision of pent-up demand with a world economy’s attempt to re-launch.

Residential real estate and construction – a virtual catch-all for nearly every resource, product-category, and process through the building value-chain – is not immune from intensifying speculation over how and when its current rule of dirt-cheap borrowing costs give way to higher interest rates.

Bloomberg staffer

Source: S&P Global, Professor Shiller’s webpage, CoreLogic; 2021 average through April

For those who lose sleep at night as the engines of inflation – and the accompanying volatility in asset values – stir noisily, Nothaft lists the following as a source of potential comfort and calm.

Housing has generally been a good inflation hedge over long periods of time, with home prices generally rising slightly faster than inflation.

And then, don’t forget, there are the millennials who are still in rapid household and family formation mode, and still building their income power in a recovering economy.

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