If these figures are accurate and I am reading the chart correctly, housing prices went from about 2.7x annual income to about 6.4x annual income. I feel like artificially low rates have had the effect of inflating house prices along with builders building houses that are too big and with too many features. Very few 3 bed, 1 bath houses without large garages. People who wanted these houses are forced to buy bigger houses because that's about all that's available.