A House Didn't Used to Be an Investment
For most of American history, a house was shelter. A consumable. Something you saved for and bought outright. The home-price-to-income ratio hovered around 2–3× for decades under sound money — the classical gold standard, the belle époque, even the managed gold standard of Bretton Woods. Then fiat happened. Each loosening of the monetary constraints — the Federal Reserve Act (1913), Roosevelt's break from gold convertibility (1933), the Nixon Shock (1971) — coincided with housing moving further from utility value and closer to its current role as the world's largest store of value. This page's argument is that the money is the reason.
The pattern is consistent. Under the classical gold standard, with the dollar pegged at $20.67 per ounce, housing prices tracked incomes closely. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 introduced the machinery of monetary expansion, but the gold peg initially constrained it. The critical inflection came in April 1933, when Roosevelt revoked gold convertibility and transformed federal debt from a claim on gold into a claim on dollars — what economists call the "Nominal Revolution." This enabled unbacked fiscal expansion that reflated asset prices, including housing, without a corresponding rise in real incomes. The 1971 Nixon Shock completed the transition, removing the last constraint. Each step loosened the monetary constraint, and each was followed by a higher price-to-income ratio.
The argument for why the trend held: savers had few alternatives. Gold was confiscated, regulated, and impractical for daily savings. Bonds were denominated in the same depreciating currency. Stocks required expertise and carried counterparty risk. On this reading, housing became the default by elimination. Bitcoin is a new kind of alternative. It is a bearer asset with a fixed supply that can be held with no mortgage, no property tax and no maintenance, though custody and volatility are costs of their own. If bitcoin absorbs part of the monetary premium in global real estate, the home-price-to-income ratio could move back toward its historical 2–3×. That is the thesis this page tests, not a measurement.
The Pattern Is Global
If broken money were a US problem, the story would end here. It isn't. The same monetary forces that pushed American housing from ~3× income to ~5× have pushed every other major Anglophone market further. Bitcoin's argument is structural — and structural problems leave global fingerprints. The chart below tracks price-to-income across five major markets over the past two decades.
The US line (amber) is the most affordable of the five. Hong Kong peaked at 23.2× in 2021 — nearly eight times the "affordable" threshold, and roughly five times the US figure. Sydney and Vancouver spent most of the last decade above 10× income. Greater London, the steadiest of the climbers, hit an all-time high of 9.1× in 2024. In none of these markets was housing "affordable" in any year shown — and as late as 1990, per Demographia's own historical context, national price-to-income ratios sat at 3.0× or less across Australia, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and the US. Every market on this chart has roughly tripled relative to income within a single working life.
Your Home Has Been Deflating
measured in the new sound money standard
You think your house appreciated. In dollar terms, it did. Price the same house in bitcoin, a money with a fixed supply, and the picture inverts: since 2013 the house has fallen steeply. Two readings fit the chart. On this page's reading, the house isn't getting more valuable; the dollar is getting weaker. The other reading is that bitcoin rose as it was adopted. Both are part of the story.
Yes, the line is volatile, because bitcoin is volatile. But look at the direction. In 2013, you needed 367 bitcoin to buy the median US house. By 2025, you needed roughly 5. That's a 98.6% decline in the bitcoin-denominated cost of housing. Dollar appreciation in home values doesn't change what this chart shows. The page's reading is that the house is demonetizing, shedding its store-of-value premium as bitcoin takes on a monetary role. The dashed line extends the past trend; it is not a forecast, and the path has been jagged.
What If You Postponed the House Purchase?
The conventional wisdom says: buy a house as soon as you can. Lock in a mortgage. Build equity. But what if you took the money you would have used as a down payment and bought bitcoin instead? For most start years in the calculator's range, the historical data show that after a few years you could have bought the house outright, with no mortgage, and sometimes several; pick a year and see. This is not investment advice, and past bitcoin returns are not a forecast.
Buying bitcoin is not "missing out on a house." It is a postponed house purchase — one where you might buy the same house for a fraction of its current bitcoin cost, potentially outright, without a thirty-year mortgage. The question is not whether you want a house. The question is whether you want a mortgage.
The mortgage is often described as "leverage" — and it is. A 20% down payment — the conventional case — gives you 5:1 exposure to house price appreciation. But leverage has a cost. Over 30 years at typical rates, you pay roughly double the purchase price in total — the house plus the interest. Add property taxes (which never stop), insurance, and maintenance, and the all-in cost of ownership runs well above the price (The Ceiling tab adds it up). Priced in bitcoin, that asset has been deflating. Holding bitcoin involves no leverage, interest, property tax or maintenance. Its costs are volatility and custody, and you still pay rent.
What Might Happen Going Forward?
The retrospective calculator above shows what did happen when you chose bitcoin over a house. This calculator asks the same question forward: what does the Power Law model suggest happens from here? Enter your own assumptions and compare. The projection is built on the Power Law growth model; market behavior may diverge.
This calculator uses the Power Law model as its bitcoin price assumption. The Power Law is an empirical observation with a 95%+ R² fit, not a guarantee. This is not investment advice.
Figures throughout are in USD. Reading from outside the US? Read why →
How Much More Income Can a Mortgage Consume?
If house prices keep rising relative to incomes, at some point people simply cannot afford the monthly payment — regardless of interest rates, loan terms, or creative financing. This ratio has a structural ceiling, and we may be approaching it. Bitcoin has no payment-to-income ceiling of this kind: its supply is fixed and its adoption is still early, though its price can fall as well as rise.
A household spending more than 30% of gross income on housing is considered "cost-burdened" by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. A median-income household buying the median-priced home today would be at or beyond this threshold. After accounting for taxes, insurance, and maintenance, the true burden is even higher. Something has to give: prices fall, incomes rise faster than prices, rates fall, or housing sheds part of its store-of-value premium. The last is the path this page argues bitcoin makes possible; the others remain possible too.