Commentary America’s housing market faces increasingly powerful crosscurrents. On the one side, low mortgage rates buoy both buying and pricing. The recent increase in inflation reinforces this lift, as it makes low rates that much more attractive, and many see real estate as a hedge against the inflation. On the other side, rising house prices have begun to tax the limits of the average family’s income, a pressure that will become even more intense over time, especially if mortgage rates rise. How this mix of influences pans out and how soon depends almost entirely on Federal Reserve interest rate policies. For the moment, the upside of these crosscurrents seems to be prevailing. Though surveys show that 40 percent of Americans think this is a bad time to buy a house—a greater percentage than any time since the early 1980s—housing sales remain robust. In September, new home sales rose almost 14 …