Bush/Bernanke facilitated the re-writing of the rules to "socialize" the losses and created too big to fail. It's a precedent that lives on today and has damned the entire economy, this is why rates have been held to 0% for seven years. A healthy economy requires bad companies to fail (natural consequences and all). If a company can never fail, the entire economy must be invested to ensure its survival.
Bush was likely manipulated into that, and I think that's a very good argument given the threats we know were leveled, but he still made the decision to open to the public treasury. I have to assume other nastiness was promised that was never made public.
And the best part was TARP was unable to do what we were told it would do; isolate the toxic assets. The exposure was too great and they knew it at the time. TARP ending up being an injection of value to float balance sheets, nothing more.
So if the centrally-planned economy is invested in making sure certain companies, and the markets in general, succeed, what is the market price of a house when those companies/markets are heavily dependent on the success of housing?
Would that stop me from buying a house right now? Not if the dollars worked for me (rent vs. buy) as a commodity. Would I buy for an investment? Not sure I would right now.