(NEXSTAR) – Browsing real estate listings is enough to make you wish you invented a time machine so you could have bought a house a generation ago. The following article may also have that effect.

The median price of a new home these days is about $426,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Looking back at 1980, the median new home cost more like $68,000. But the 1980s weren't exactly considered an easy time to buy a home.

"Few periods have been as expensive to buy a home as the 1980s, when sky-high mortgage rates nearing 19% made home loans feel insurmountable," writes Anja Solum for personal finance site MoneyGeek.

Mortgage rates today are nowhere near that high, but it's widely considered harder to buy a home now than it was 40 years ago. Why? Home prices have grown far faster than people's income.

One figure that measures affordability for buyers, house price-to-income ratio, has nearly doubled since........

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