Imagine that the highs and lows of the housing bubble boom and bust years didn’t happen. Assume that home values from 2000 to the present grew at the same rate as values from 1985 to 1999. What would the housing market look like?
Zillow found that, if the housing bubble never happened, the median house value today would be $235,000, nearly $50,000 higher than the actual value of $187,000.
Also, the site says that 20 of the 30 largest metros currently have home values lower than what the hypothetical values would’ve been. Detroit, San Francisco, Seattle, and Columbus are among the cities wishing that the bubble never happened, while Los Angeles and Miami are better off in reality than in the “what if” scenario.