There were definitely blips and long-term appreciation. Here's a paper [1] on housing prices around the world, pretty interesting stuff. I guess my point was, having seen some of these graphs, there is a pretty clear transition in the 90s where the "role" of housing in the economy seems to change (although the graphs in the paper I referenced show the growth starting as early as the 60s, so who knows).

[1] http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Schularicketal2014.pdf