OK, class: Your homework assignment is to check points along the home cost chart. Since we don't have the source data for the "basic home", nor the inflation data used to index the basic home, I propose the following:
Do we have a volunteer to appraise a 120 year old standard home?
OK. First, the volunteer appraiser does a retrospective appraisal effective 1/1/1890.
Repeat for additional years. Let me know if the data gets better as you go along.
To what length does the author go in his book to outline the scope of his work? IMO, it would be a laborious, but necessary task to follow along with his assumptions about the underlying data for each particular time interval, the assumptions wrapped into any constant dollar conversion, etc.
The quality and quantity of data probably varied considerably along that time line, not always getting better as time went forward. WW 1, WW2, Lots of questions