The upsides of the US housing boom-and-bust don't get enough attention

A big reason the US economy is outperforming the rest of the world this year is that Americans have more money to spend.

The biggest reason for that is people aren't forking over a big part of their paychecks on mortgages. The economy is healthy and GDP is higher than its ever been, yet housing is relatively inexpensive. It's a dream scenario.

According to Zillow, the median price of homes sold in the US is $230,800. In Canada, the median house price is just over $500,000; in Australia it's $470,000. Even adjusting for FX, that's still almost 60% higher. That's the difference between a $2500 mortgage and a $1200 mortgage each month and the gap will only grow as interest rates rise.

Take Omaha, Nebraska. It's the home town and headquarters of Warren Buffett. Business Insider ranked it as the 28th best city to live in America. Here is a 3 bedroom, bathroom house for sale on a corner lot for $259,000.

It's dated on the inside but that house is on the same street as Buffett's and just over block away. He's at 301 S 55th street, this is 501 S 55th street:

The housing boom in the US led to something that's extremely valuable in the economic big picture -- cheap homes. The amount of homes built before the crisis was extraordinary and we're still nowhere near it.

Ultimately, housing is one of the least-efficient places for money to be invested. There is almost no economic benefit besides one-off construction.

What's lost sometimes is the short-term versus the long-term. In the short-term, say 10 years, rising house prices give people more spending money because of the wealth effect and home equity loans.

However in the longer-term, other people need to buy those houses. Those people are essentially paying for the consumption of the generation before them. So you've simply brought spending forward and now you have the bill to pay. In many countries that bill will have to be paid in the decades ahead; in the US it won't.

That's going to be a long-term tailwind for the US and for the US dollar in the years ahead.