It absolutely is a speculation driven market, and has been for a long time, and that is the key driver for housing prices, which is why housing price increases

It absolutely is a speculation driven market, and has been for a long time, and that is the key driver for housing prices, which is why housing price increases coincided with a massive increase in money supply. People talk about adjustable rate mortgages and such from the last bubble, and these sorts of thing played a role and helped nail in the people at the bottom, but they aren't what caused that crisis. Turning a market for an inelastic utilitarian asset into a speculative market is the fundamental cause, everything else is just an instrument of that perverted market.