Stories
Every number in every story is computed from the same public series as the calculator — and we tell the ones where not buying won, too.
Austin, 2012: the year "let’s wait and see" got expensive
A $300,000 Austin house from 2012 is $767,136 today by the FHFA index — and the 20% down payment did far better than the house.
Miami, 2006: the seller who was right — for five years
Selling at Miami’s 2006 peak looked genius by 2011: the index fell 44%. Then the market spent a decade taking the win back.
Las Vegas: same house, five years apart, two different lives
A Las Vegas house bought in 2006 is 1.5× today. The same house bought in 2011 is 3.6×. Timing is the whole story exactly once per lifetime.
The brownstone your parents didn’t buy (New York, 1983)
A $150,000 New York purchase in 1983 is about $1.41M of metro-index value today — the family story every borough tells.
San Francisco, 1995: the down payment that became generational
A $250,000 San Francisco purchase in 1995, on 20% down, works out to $1.28M of equity — 26× the cash.
Detroit, 2005: the decade the house lost
A 2005 Detroit purchase was still down 24% in 2015. We print the losing years too — that’s the point of this site.
The index-fund rebuttal (Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA, 2009)
Same $60,000 in 2009: the down payment route left $269,286 of equity; the S&P 500 route left $450,165. Sometimes the boring answer wins.
Houston, 1983: buying at the top of an oil boom
A 1983 Houston purchase fell 22% into the oil bust and didn’t see its price again until 1998 — 15 years of waiting.
Figures are index-derived estimates for the metro market — not an appraisal of any specific house. FHFA data; this site is neither endorsed nor certified by FHFA. Not financial advice.