Regional Housing Crisis (1975–2026)

A follow-up to the Investing Start/Finish heatmap doodle — this one zooms in on the U.S. housing market specifically, letting you compare purchase-year vs. sale-year annualized returns from 1975 through 2026 for every U.S. state and 500+ metro areas.

Demo

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<div class="embed-launch-bar"> <span>Interactive demo — best experienced at full width</span> <a href="/assets/doodles/the-regional-housing-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> ↗ Open full page </a> </div> <div class="embed-frame-wrap-housing"> <iframe class="embed-frame-housing" src="/assets/doodles/the-regional-housing-crisis/" title="Regional Housing Crisis 1975–2026 live demo" loading="lazy" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen style="height: 1100px;"

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If your browser blocks embeds, open it directly: Open live demo

What it shows

The primary view is a holding-period heatmap: each cell represents the annualized (CAGR) return for a home purchased in the row-year and sold in the column-year. Deep red signals losses, cream is flat, greens are gains. You can immediately spot the GFC crater (2006–2012), the COVID rocket (2019–2022), and the post-pandemic plateau we're navigating now.

Below the heatmap is a paired sub-graph of the 30-year fixed mortgage rate (red) and 10-year Treasury yield (blue) since 1975 — the secular decline in both rates was a major structural tailwind for home prices over five decades, and its reversal since 2022 explains much of the "frozen" market we're in today.

Why 2026 is not 2008

Many observers look at elevated 2026 prices and worry about a repeat of the subprime meltdown. The Economics & Credit tab makes the structural counter-argument:

Supply is genuinely constrained. Post-2008 construction never recovered to meet demographic demand. The U.S. is millions of units short — a structural floor that didn't exist pre-GFC.
Mortgage quality is radically different. Post-Dodd-Frank underwriting eliminated most exotic products. Today's homeowners skew high-credit-score, fixed-rate, and locked into sub-4% mortgages they have no incentive to walk away from.
The "lock-in effect" suppresses supply. Rather than a wave of distressed selling, restricted inventory keeps prices elevated even as affordability deteriorates.

The risk today isn't a 2008-style systemic default cascade — it's a prolonged, grinding affordability crisis for non-homeowners, with prices high and sticky rather than collapsing.

Data sources

Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) — smoothed, seasonally adjusted mid-tier values, 2000–2026
FHFA HPI all-transactions index — quarterly Q4 values spliced back to 1975 for states & national
BLS CPI-U — for real (inflation-adjusted) return toggle
FRED DGS10 / MORTGAGE30US — 10-year Treasury yield and 30-year fixed mortgage rate

The FHFA and Zillow series are spliced at year-2000 using a scale factor so national and state series extend continuously from 1975; metro areas begin in 2000 where Zillow data starts.

Commentary

This started as a curiosity: the original Start/Finish doodle covered equity indices. I wanted the same matrix view for housing, but with regional granularity — because housing crises are deeply geographic. Nevada and Florida cratered 50%+ during the GFC while Texas barely dipped. Today's hot markets (Austin, Tampa, Phoenix) look very different from coastal supply-constrained cores (NYC, Boston, SF).

The most interesting visual is the "twin peaks" tab — some cities show a classic GFC double-peak shape (La Vegas, Miami) while others (San Francisco, Seattle) were resilient in 2008 but experienced an even steeper post-pandemic surge. Both patterns converge on the same 2026 plateau, but from very different trajectories.