Low Interest rates inflated home prices and the cost of building materials and labor, the same way tax credits and other government grants and tax deductibility inflate college tuition, medical and car prices. Nobody likes to be on the receiving end of "deflation", they all scream "collapse" now, but when prices were artificially increasing everybody was pileing on the wagon to get easy money toward their evasive "retirement." Housing has always been a liability, not an asset, and now after 40 years of this madness the cities are literal warzones.