This week let’s take a look at how home values in Flathead County have performed against the stock market and the price of gold. We all have friends and family who want to tell you how to invest, so this week’s graphs illustrate the past history of three commonly recommended alternatives.
These graphs use the median home price in Flathead County for the home price index. The stock market is represented by the S & P 500 index at the end of each year. Gold is represented by the price per ounce at the end of each year.
The first graph shows the percentage price changes from 1990 to the present. The stock market has increased around 650 percent, the price of gold has increased around 260 percent and the median home price in Flathead County has increased a little over 330 percent. Flathead home prices have outperformed gold, but not the stock market over the last 27 years.
The second graph uses 2000 as the base year and shows a different story. The stock market increased around 90 percent, gold increased around 375 percent and the median home price increased around 130 percent. Over the last 17 years, Flathead home prices outperformed the stock market, but not the gold market.
If we just take a look at the last seven years, since 2010 we find that the stock market increased by nearly 100 percent and the gold market declined 18 percent. Again Flathead home prices were in the middle with a 40 percent increase in value.
Since the beginning of 2017, the stock market (S & P 500 index) increased by around 10 percent, the gold market by nearly 10 percent, and Flathead home prices by around 8 percent.
Dependent upon the time period analyzed, markets do change. What has been consistent is that Flathead home prices have been much less volatile than either the stock market or the gold market, but have still performed competitively over time with both.
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