House prices are wrong. Literally, the sticker price is the wrong price, and its because of debt.

The availability of debt is effectively an increase in the money supply. That alone isn't the problem, but the fact that its unevenly distributed is (I'm not arguing for anything social justice-y). The Cantillon Effect is at play everywhere. Whoever can access debt, can buy the houses and duplexes and all the other stuff. Nothing wrong with that, in itself. Work, save, become credit worthy. But if more money is only available to people with more money, and scarce for everyone else, then assets get bid up. The value premium on stocks rises - PE ratios only go up, in the long run. Houses will always at least keep pace with inflation, but it looks like they will also always have a rising premium. Premium on what? Is it the asset or the money being used?

Then look at the quality of the houses being built. They're paper. You can see it falling apart in the first year of owning a new home. That's because the price of *everything* is wrong. Inflation pulls the floor out from under the producers, who want to be competing via quality rising, but instead must compete via material substitution to keep their costs low, which is because the price of their inputs keeps rising. Manufacturer's inflation is the real inflation, btw - just track that to know what's actually going on.

I think I need to backtrack a tad and say the world I imagine is without interest, not debt. My bad, I did conflate them. You can have zero interest debt. For how to organize it and match time preferences, I point to Islamic finance, which would be exactly the same as Christian finance, if Christians hadn't let Calvin preach a bunch of bullshit, which was all a camouflage for inserting interest rates into our society. That's a guy that's burning right now. Back to Islamic finance! They use equity to replace interest. Not a perfect solution, but I think bitcoin is the upgrade they need to really make it work. I recommend just googling it - I'm not saying its perfect, and my caveats would make explaining it onerous, even if I could do it justice. The end result is the most telling - prices of things *denominated in hours worked* are lower in the middle east. That's the goal.... That's what econ is supposed to be about - maximizing free time, not productivity.

Okay anyways, hope I gave you some ideas.