American Dream Ledger: Lifetime Cost of a Home

## What this measures

The full cost of buying the median-priced new house sold in the United States with a 30-year fixed mortgage at the month's average rate: the 20% down payment, 360 monthly payments of principal and interest, and 30 years of property tax and homeowners insurance. Dollars, monthly.

## Why it matters

Housing is the largest single price in a household's lifetime. This folds the two things that move it, the house price and the mortgage rate, into one figure, so a rate move shows up as dollars.

## How to read it

Higher means owning a home costs more. A one-point rise in the mortgage rate raises the payments total by roughly a tenth. The house price is quarterly, so the series steps each quarter and moves in between with the rate.

## What it does not say

The price is for new houses (Census/HUD), which run above existing-home prices. Property tax and insurance are what the average homeowner paid in the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, not a bill for this particular house, and are held flat for 30 years at today's level. Maintenance, closing costs and the tax treatment of mortgage interest are left out.

## How it is priced

Each month is priced in that month's dollars. Annual public figures (a BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey year, an NCES academic year, a CMS health-spending year) are the average for their own period: a month inside the period is the figure × the matching CPI-U index for the month ÷ its average over the period, and months after the newest published period carry that figure forward by the same index until the next edition replaces it. Nothing is projected forward and nothing is discounted: it is the price tag at today's prices. A month is written once its CPI and a full month of mortgage rates exist. October 2025 has no reading because BLS published no CPI for it.

## Assumptions

Assumptions used across the American Dream Ledger: an adult lifetime of 60 years (18 to 78, about the remaining period life expectancy at 18 in SSA's life tables); a working lifetime of 40 years (25 to 64); two adults and two children; a 30-year fixed mortgage with 20% down; four years of public in-state college per child; retirement of 20 years from 65 (about SSA's period life expectancy at 65, men and women averaged) at 70% of median household income. Weddings are left out: no public-domain source measures what a wedding costs.

## Source

Palanor calculation (src/lib/standards/american-dream.ts), recomputed daily by /api/cron/american-dream. Inputs: median sales price of new houses sold (Census Bureau and HUD, MSPUS via FRED, public domain); 30-year fixed mortgage rate (Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey®, via FRED, used with attribution as Freddie Mac allows); homeowners' property taxes (CE item 220211) and homeowners insurance (220121) from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey (public domain), carried forward by CPI-U all items.