Yeah the house example doesn't fit well with the numbers listed in the post. 113k -> 400k would mean that the price has roughly doubled twice over 36 years or undergone a 3-4% compounding increase in price per year. That's still a lot, especially since housing is usually a person's largest expensive. But the rate of increase isn't as much as that of college education, where people end up with loans today that rival mortgages of 30 years ago.