From most anything I've read, they've for the most part (yes, with some exceptions) tracked the overall inflation rate very closely, up until around the year 2000, when ratios and charts in the US and much of the world started to massively deviate from extremely long standing trends.

I think part of it is credit (money) creation out of thin air, and it has to go somewhere. Another part is the massive productivity gains of past decades, that also has to go somewhere, and it isn't going into rising prices of consumer goods for the most part.

To me, it seems logical that the ratio between median housing prices and median wages has to be rather constant over time, and if it isn't, there should be a measurable offset somewhere else, especially when the housing is by far the largest purchase 90%+ of people will ever make - yet, I see no proportional offset (of decreased spending) elsewhere.

Oftentimes governments will place extra taxes on non-primary residences which discourage using houses as an investment vehicle. I'm not sure about the history of this, though.

We have something like that in Italy, except financial institution were made exempt to protect them from the housing mortgage crash of 2008, and now are holding on empty houses waiting for market price to raise again.

They can't sell at a loss because all mortgages given were put in books at the 100% repayment price and now they need to wait not only for the house to recover the price lost since the crisis but also to raise in value to match the expected mortgage gain written in books, to avoid negative impact on their ratings