If people normally paid cash for houses, that might be an interesting point. But most people rent money to buy a house (even while ironically trumpeting "rentin

If people normally paid cash for houses, that might be an interesting point. But most people rent money to buy a house (even while ironically trumpeting "renting is throwing money away"). Like the previous commenter pointed out, real estate-related rents will expand to take up any available slack in income. Now, save recently, the cost to rent money for real estate was in steady decline. That means even a constant income could afford to rent an increasing amount of money. As a result, the price of housing was able to rise disproportionally to income, but proportionally to rent.