Driving up rental prices across entire markets is what drove up mortgages. Appraisals were more of a side effect of that than reflections of actual value, altho

Driving up rental prices across entire markets is what drove up mortgages. Appraisals were more of a side effect of that than reflections of actual value, although most home owners will be loath to admit their golden geese are a shame. Rental prices are used as an indicator for housing demand, and median home values feed back into the calculation for rental prices. It was a setup by deep pocketed financial interests with heavy investment into hard assets to game the math. Before the pandemic, the rhetoric against WFH was largely a tactic by mid- and high-rise owners to sustain property values and income. I don't think a lot of people had access to the people having those conversations, but it was a fairly open topic around me going back to at least 2016.