Infographic: A New US Home Now Costs Under 100 Ounces of Gold

Builders keep a lid on dollar prices

In dollar terms, the market has barely moved. FRED data show the quarterly median has held between US$408,500 and US$435,400 since 2023, after peaking at US$442,600 in the fourth quarter of 2022. It stood at US$410,700 in the second quarter of 2026.

Monthly figures have dipped lower. The Census Bureau’s July new-home report, released on August 25, put the median at US$393,800, which HousingWire noted was the lowest since July 2021.

Builders are behind much of the weakness. In August, 35 percent of US home builders cut prices, by an average of 6 percent, and 63 percent offered buyers other incentives, according to the National Association of Home Builders’ monthly survey.

HousingWire attributes much of the median’s decline since 2022 to builders selling more smaller, lower-priced homes. Builders are also paying for mortgage-rate buydowns, which lower the buyer’s interest rate, the publication reports.

Gold’s own pullback nudged the ratio back up in the second quarter. Bullion’s average of US$4,512 came in below the first quarter’s US$4,876 as the metal eased from its early-2026 record, lifting the cost of a new house from 84 ounces to 91.

The ounce count hit its high of 684 in 1970, when governments, not markets, set the price of gold. The Bretton Woods system pegged gold at US$35 an ounce. From March 1968, only central banks traded at that price while everyone else paid a market rate, and the US stopped exchanging dollars for gold in August 1971, according to Federal Reserve History.

With gold pinned near US$35, rising house prices did all the work. From the first quarter of 1963 to the second quarter of 1970, the median new-home price rose 37 percent, while gold’s average price gained just 2 percent, to US$35.67.

Later lows came at the end of gold’s record runs. Gold hit a then-record US$850 in January 1980, and the ounce count fell to 100 that year. It then dropped to 131 in the third quarter of 2011, when gold set its September record of US$1,920.

MiningVisuals’ series runs through the second quarter of 2026. For July, the World Bank put gold’s average price at US$4,073 an ounce, and the Census Bureau put the median new-home price at US$393,800.