Risa

This is an astute observation.

In fact, macroeconomic theory would say that appreciation in real estate should be tied to the rate of interest, which in turn should be tied the rise of the price level: inflation.

There are discrepancies, of course. Lately real estate has been growing faster than inflation. And importantly, during the Second Thirty Years War, 1914-1945, those European apartments suffered great depreciation and outright physical destruction.

The biggest thing that happened, though, is that inflation essentially did not exist until the second half of the nineteenth century. As far as we can tell, inflation was created by the industrial revolution. Before then, with wide error bars, you can tie prices from the 1760s to prices from the Roman Empire, in the same base metals.

For more evidence, read the works of Jane Austen and Victor Hugo. They are full of specific prices for things that make no sense to modern readers. But the authors expected that future readers would be able relate to the specific prices. Modern fiction authors avoid mentioning specific prices when they want their work to feel timeless.

Source, generally: Thomas Piketty. Capital in the Twenty First Century.