No Stupid Questions

The answer is always speculation investment. People are on average richer and real estate is the only trully limited economic resource as we have limited land especially in desired locations.

Seriously lookup how much of real estate is uninhabitable.

People are richer, the tech is better and everything we know about economy would indicate that real estate should be more accessible but that's not the case because the market is manipulated.

The best part? If you invest in a stock index you'll almost always out do real estate ownership almost anywhere in developed world. So people are hustling this stupid game while they could just sit back and watch money do money things.

I stayed at an Airbnb ...

That's why.

In my area:

1. My area is a relatively Low cost of living area surrounded by people that have money. When they want to work remote but still stay in the same state, some % come east for cheap housing. They can pay cash for houses.
2. Corporations are buying houses, then renting. Less houses on the market. They also pay cash for houses.
3. People with multiple houses can use the aforementioned houses to buy up more housing to rent, creating a investment loop. Its in their best interest to keep the houses as small businesses/revenue streams.
4. There are apps that hook into MLS (example: https://www.mlslistings.com/more/mobile-app/) which means investors can make an offer faster than the general public or set up alerts (think stock market) that hook into the API. Ever wonder why some houses get multiple offers before or right after they are listed? This only works if the company/entity selling the property decides to add in the info into MLS and not just go with the defaults.
5. More people are alive today than yesterday. They need housing. There are less houses getting built, or being built for owning. For renting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrxZqPVFTag

Source: Used to work for a company that did this sort of buy/selling of properties.

The market saw an unexpected dip post pandemic as a result of higher and higher interest rates as fiscal authorities mingled with threats of inflation.

Now that the interest rates are falling, prices are rising so that the monthly payments on loans and mortgages stay roughly the same, because it is the actual determining factor of if a property will sell.

Prices are only rising in good locations in NE and midwest.

South and west both are in decline over all.

Housing shortage - not building enough homes. More people. Costs to build rising.

I get roasted for this every time I mention it because I think people on sites like this generally fit in this category and feel personally attacked, but I honestly believe a large part of it is from WFH becoming more widespread during COVID. People were able to leave the large cities where their jobs were all located and could move wherever they wanted to so that competition for housing drives prices way way up. The few friends I do have all work in software development and all moved during COVID away from their offices and into houses. They all had a similar story "the realtor told me any house that's on the market for more than 5 days (that's crazy crazy short) has a major issue, stay away from those."

Tie that into the expansion of investment companies buying houses with the intent of renting them forever and the NIMBYism that keeps new construction from being made because "My PrOpErTy VaLuE!" and it's just a recipe for disaster...

I hate that I'm going to be stuck renting someone's garage or basement and paying their mortgage in rent prices for the rest of my life...

AirBnBs are one reason. My wife’s home town is trying to pass a law regarding short term rentals because close to half of the houses in town are airbnbs. A developer started to build a new housing development specifically to be bnbs.

Another reason is corporations are buying property as investments.

It varies by region and country but the big underlying factor is not enough new homes are being built. It's creating an artificial scarcity which is driving up prices. Some other factors come into play depending on where you live. For example, I've read in America that a lot of the homes are being bought by trust funds and big corporations that can just overbid everyone. Now there are even less viable homes to sell. Here in Canada, we have a big problem where our federal government brought in a large amount of immigrants for its Temporary Foreign Worker program and its foreign student programs which created a big spike in population, especially in the major cities. The local governments are responsible for house building and didn't do anything about accommodating a bigger population despite them knowing it was coming.