The interesting thing about a mortgage is that it's a leveraged bet on increased housing prices. Having a heavily mortgaged population makes it very politically difficult to decrease housing prices, as small changes in housing price will lead to huge swings in net worth, even as the high prices cause a number of social ills including but not limited to population decrease.
Welcome to the UK! Where the government does everything it can to keep house prices afloat. See Help To Buy scheme for first-time buyers and Stamp Duty Holiday to keep the housing market going during the Covid pandemic.
