I think that too is over-simplified. The money was intended to soften a collapse, and it did that. Did it create upward pressure relative to what would have happened without it? Sure.
But by the same token you could say people not losing their jobs set the stage.
Not really. There was a spike at the end of the pandemic, similar to the dip during it; but that's more than offset by the post-pandemic drop.
The number of U.S. home sales in the United States stagnated in 2025, after soaring in 2021. A total of 4.1 million transactions of existing homes, including single-family, condo, and co-ops, were completed in 2025, down from 6.12 million in 2021. According to the forecast, the housing market is...
www.statista.com
I'm not saying that played no role at all; but it doesn't appear to be a major driver of anything beyond (what it was intended to do) preventing a collapse.