Kudos to Eric Fischer for a detailed analysis of Housing in San Francisco.

https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html

He did a regression and found 3 key features that correlate with housing prices:

• Housing Supply: how much housing is available on the market
• Salaries: how much are people in the area earning?
• Employment: how many people in the area are employed?

Interestingly and surprisingly, the trend of rents over time was quite steady unaffected by the introduction of policies like rent control. The data & regression suggests that housing follows the basic laws of supply & demand just like other commodities.