“The historicals really mean nothing in this case, however. Chicago is not the same city that it was 50, 40, 30, or even 10 years ago. We cannot predict the future of home prices based on historical income / home price levels. Some economists like to dwell on this statisitic to show that home prices are inflated, but the comparisons really just show that people are spending more of their income on housing these days.”

— UptownR commenting on our post about Chicago real estate, “No boom means no bust?”