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20 years ago the average house cost 7-8.5 times the average income (cf 5X today). 2006 was the worst time to buy a house in America, ever. It was an exceptionally bad time because prices collapsed in 2008 and anybody buying in 2006 would have been seriously underwater.

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Well I live in Australia. The situation is quite different.

You know what else you had in 2006? Loans, without jumping through hoops. "Being underwater" is the kind of thing people say when they look at their home as a thing they intend to make money reselling later. If you want to own the place you live, then you want easily-acquired loans and available inventory. It doesn't matter what someone else thinks it's worth, as long as you can pay your note.

You seem to have rose glasses for the actual situation. Many of those people with easily acquired loans have lost everything since the terms of the loans were as easily changed in 2009 and they could no longer afford the payments

Those loans are the only reason many elder millenials managed to own property at all. Not all of the loans given in that era were ARMs or otherwise amenable to modification; many were regular old fixed-rate mortgages.

In the US, adjustable rate is extremely rare in general. I had never even heard of them until my 30s in threads like these.

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