The cost of buying a home moves in cycles, with some of the highest costs occurring nearly 50 years ago and some of the cheapest just 20 years ago, but what about today?
President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders (EOs) in the past month aimed at cutting federal government "red tape" that makes it harder to buy a home, but as with all bureaucracy action, the orders are taking some time to work through the system.
Economists say there's a shortage of 10 million houses in the US today, and the president's EOs will likely result in more home building, leading to overall lower new home prices.
Lance Thrailkill, the Dallas All Metals Fabricating CEO, says "the supply and demand gap that's growing massively in terms of how many homes are needed versus how many we're building per year leads to the conclusion that automation is the only way to solve this."
He's not talk artificial intelligence, he means more automated work done in service of newer building methods, such as modular homes and 3D printed houses, which he says will even do well in the hurricane-prone environs of the Gulf Coast.
The biggest problems are that a big shortage of labor is on the way.
"The real issue is, we have a massive skilled labor shortage and 40-percent of construction workers are going to retire in the next five years.
And for every five leaving, only two new workers will join the workforce.
In addition, because we've been building homes the same way for 100 years, it's time, he says, to start rethinking how it's done.
"You know it's wood framing, it's sheetrock, I mean we've been building houses the same way as we have forever and the quality is getting worse while the cost is going up," he says.
That's why he says he's hoping for a broader acceptance of modular homes, for example.