[meeuwer]

My impression is that the government tried to 'solve' the problem with one main constraint in mind: to never allow the prices go down in any meaningful way. Hence the ham-fisted attempts to instead tweak taxes and ease credit conditions.

[FooBarWidget]

I guess that's the implicit constraint that none likes to talk about or admit. It doesn't help that no matter what you do, some population will be screwed over. I have seen that people who used to worry about not being able to afford a house, and who have now somehow managed to buy one, now start worrying about their house value going down.

This cannot be solved with just one trick or just in a few years. You need strong, resolute, long-term actions. But that doesn't fit in an election cycle.

[meeuwer]

Definitely. People don't hate the game, they hate losing at the game.

Problems can be either solved in a constructive way (we see that's not going to happen) or in a nonconstructive way (societal explosion or breakdown of some sort). Or sometimes problems get superseded by bigger problems. Like when recently the home prices went down just a little bit, it was because of ECB's hand forced into fighting inflation with higher interest rates, which made mortgages less accessible.