It's Schiavoization at work.
Sorry to overpost but isn't that just it: they've progressively made it easier to buy. Combined with really low interest rates, the number of people wanting to buy has increased. With all the equity that came out of the real estate bubble, too, RE sales reps could fob off the higher prices, not just because people had huge amounts of money to play with when buying up, but also because they increasingly sold it as a never-ending venture in making ever more money buying a house, letting the market raise it's value (rather than in the old days where you actually had to _do_ something to your house to see an increase in value), and constantly trade up.
Isn't it just markets at work -- socially constituted markets, of course. :)
When I was doing the research years ago, there was a lot of government reports on the importance of home ownership to creating a stable (read: politically stable {read: docile]} citizenry. With something to invest in, something to want to protect, defend, whatever, people are less likely, they reasoned, to be politically rebellious.
I shall dub the process: Schiavoizing the populace. They've liquified the cerebral cortex of the populace.
Kelley