Today’s hot housing market is one of the peculiar outcrops of the pandemic. Housing supply was already low before Covid-19, but it was further hampered as lockdowns took place and people began looking for new homes, driven by a host of reasons—from the desire to leave populated cities to better home offices or just fear of missing out (FOMO).

The Federal Reserve’s steps last year to keep the financial markets liquid and to ensure mortgage rates stayed low have continued. But the low mortgage rates pale in comparison to soaring housing prices in the past year.