Housing, a Decent Asset for Inflation Protection

On average in the US, as long as you bought your house before ~2002, you should be ok in terms of price preservation (if you're lucky, price appreciation) relating to the harm of inflation on your asset value.

Here's a chart of an inflation-adjusted US House Price Index by Case-Shiller from 1890 to 2009. Seems like after accounting for inflation, US housing returned about 50% over 120 years.

Here's a chart going through 2011. Oops. Looks like housing continued its slide and as of Q1 2011, as long as you bought your house before ~2000, you should be ok.

Alright, let me show you a chart that will make you feel better and go back to believing that housing prices rise forever and it's because they really are a great investment and the devaluation of the US dollar has nothing to do with housing prices increasing. As of Q4 2011, you only have to go back to ~2002 to be ok with the price of your house! 92% increase from 1982 to 2011 even with the housing bubble! Great returns! Note: Make sure you don't look at the inflation-adjusted House Price Index, above.

Here's the non-inflation-adjusted Case-Shiller US House Price Index:

Source: http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index-inflation-adjusted/

Source: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/04/06/steve-keens-debtwatch-no-33-april-2009-lies-damned-lies-and-housing-statistics/

Source: http://www.standardandpoors.com/servlet/BlobServer?blobheadername3=MDT-Type&blobcol=urldocumentfile&blobtable=SPComSecureDocument&blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3Ddownload.pdf&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobheadername1=content-type&blobwhere=1245329497678&blobheadervalue3=abinary%3B+charset%3DUTF-8&blobnocache=true