This is the biggest weakness of the article, I think. Rent growth is included in the Rachel/Owen example, but it's set at 2%/year to get the 15 year equilibriu

This is the biggest weakness of the article, I think. Rent growth is included in the Rachel/Owen example, but it's set at 2%/year to get the 15 year equilibrium. And during the P/R discussion, that rate is implicit in the analysis of what's an acceptable P/R to buy at. But rent growth is obviously tied to housing price growth - the highest P/R markets range from 5% to 10% per year of rent increases, which is exactly what's driving renters to demand housing at high prices. On a more theoretical level, we can observe that the article uses national averages to show that housing prices track inflation. That only holds where new housing stock is built to match rising populations. More accurately housing prices track (inflation + population growth - new stock), substantially changing a lot of these conclusions.