Sorry to weigh in so late on this. Thanks Ed for the analysis. I have a couple thoughts on the per capita-vs-median income thing.
First, I did some comparisons with per capita and median incomes a while back, and I didn’t come up with the same divergence you did. Unfortunately I can’t remember where I pulled my data but I think it might be a question of different data sources or something.
Second, if you look at the price to rent ratio, it tracks pretty well with the price to per capita income ratio. That is a sign to me that per capita income is doing a good job of tracking “spending power” on houses, because it is more or less in line with what people are spending on rents.
