Once again, the traditional “Shambling Towards Affordability” title
for this series proves inapt.  The market does have a bit of a
shamble to its step, but the direction in which it lumbers is
distinctly un-affordable.  (In price terms, anyway… low rates
do ease the sting, but that’s a separate topic to be addressed
below).

While valuations have crept up a bit over the past year, the big
picture hasn’t changed much: home prices are significantly higher,
when compared with local rents and incomes, than they typically have
been over the almost 4-decade history of the data: