I’d expect property values to go up (or have gone up) as population rises; less space per person. I bet we could also put together some geometric argument about proximity to things like cities. But it’s the weekend, so let’s just halfheartedly gesture at the potential for rigor.

Anyway, nowadays population is barely increasing so I guess property values… maybe they’ll keep pace with inflation (for whatever reason)?

Another possibility is that property values tend to go up and down as some areas become more fashionable. Maybe, for whatever reason, there’s a selection bias where we tend to associate ourselves the trajectory of people who lived in those fashionable areas instead of the unfashionable ones?