This link has in highlighted the issue in bold. “Wages have not kept up with housing prices”

The numbers that define the issue in your favor are skewed by homeowners “trading up” for a larger house. If you rerun the numbers for first time home buyers you’d see the wage growth issue in plain sight. When existing homeowners trade up they leverage existing equity to attain a larger house and wages don’t have as large of an impact, especially in a low interest rate era. Home builders built larger homes to satisfy this demand, resulting in the larger square footage, and smaller homes were ignored as first time home buyers were not as profitable. As interest rates have risen, we now have people trapped in their homes unable to trade up, and home builders building too large of a home for first time home buyers to afford.