Someone once said that you never actually “buy” a home.  Instead, you merely commit to paying an annuity: the mortgage. That’s largely true. The price and “value” of homes for the overwhelming majority of homeowners is a function of home buyers’ ability to make payments. And with the Federal Reserve signaling further interest rate hikes, home buyers and sellers—and assorted others who use credit—will incur knock-on effects from those increases. The low rates of the last several years, together with additional money creation from the Fed and other reckless fiscal and monetary policy, have led to an extraordinary increase in home prices, particularly as a consequence of the CCP Virus becoming pandemic. In just 18 months, median home prices surged 26.5 percent, from $322,600 at the end of the second quarter of 2020 (or “2020Q2”) to $408,100 in 2021Q4. That price surge, together with the higher interest rates the Fed …