What's In Your Wallet?

By 3rd Way

Gretchen of Milwaukee Rising did a quick study on the decline of housing prices in aldermanic district 7.  This inspired me to run an analysis of the housing prices in my hood.  Here in Bay View, the better east side of Milwaukee, housing prices have not falling as much as I feared they might have, but they have fallen about 4% from their peak.

In the first part of the year I bought my house (2005) the average price on 271 sales was $167,302.  In the first part of 2007 the average price on 145 sales was $161,588.

Meanwhile inflation is surging at a pace not seen since before the last Democratic administration and the stock markets have all dropped more than 10% in the last 3 months.  In this economic atmosphere it would be hard to convince anyone that the status quo is the best we can do. 

The economic apologists of the current administration are going to be hard pressed to make the case that their policies have benefitted the middle class when we can review our net worth and judge the results for ourselves.  Fairly or not the months leading up to the election are the only ones that will weigh heavily on most voters minds.  We can look at our 401K statements, review the sales prices of our neighbor’s houses and check our groceries bills to prove that our cost of living is going up while the worth of our assets are going down.  There is no think tank study that McIlheran or anyone else can site to disprove that.