The average price of a house sold in the US in 2018 is around $375,000.

If we adjust the 1989 dollars for inflation, that $145,000 becomes about $295,000.

That means, in 2018 dollars, the average house price has gone up around $80,000 or 27% over the past 29 years.

That's a significant increase and we should be concerned about whether or not Americans can afford to purchase houses, but framing the problem as "houses are now 35-40 times as expensive as they were in the late 80's" is terribly inaccurate as a general metric.

house price data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS

inflation calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/