Equities are not the only asset class in existence and in any market people can sell just as easily as they can buy.
Not to mention, in addition to the GFC, it took the stock market until 1954 to recover the 1929 highs and in Japan it took until 2024 to recover from the 1989 crash, so there are clear examples where the stock market doesn't always go up for very long periods of time.
https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/the-2000s-housing-bubbl...
housing related supply-side problems are simply very hard to address whereas everybody and their dog is pumping money into the market (cheap loans to help families, singles, poor people, cheap loans to developers, and anyone who wants, because it's low risk anyway, and companies are doing CoL adjustments, and then there are spillover effects from big metro areas, and foreign investors ...)
and US population was growing, and construction starts were and are still low (historically but compared to the "pent up" demand)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST
of course the problem is that simply pouring money into housing without transportation infrastructure just leads to even more problems, so it's really a problems bubble! (always has been.)