It is probably also worthwhile to divide by population (or maybe just working age population).
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I agree, but it’s more complicated than that, as corporations and public entities also finance real estate purchases, and the proportions of which change over time.
To be fair how can we do what we want again, but next time with less problems for us attached is a fairly basic human strategy for getting along in the world.
That doesn’t obviate the moral and ethical failings of the lenders [EDIT: or regulators] here, but it’s not like they are not in good company in this respect. 
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The problem in American society is that many decision-makers aren’t really interested in implementing or preserving any measures meant to mitigate problems. Instead, we get the usual “regulations ba-a-ad” Libertarians who use all sorts of fallacies (e.g. the Nirvana fallacy) to call for the elimination of laws they were forced to swallow (after suitable watering-down) after the last disaster.
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No, it wasn’t FHA or VA. Just a standard 30 year fixed. I was a first time buyer, so that may have made the difference.
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Actually I think the Fed owns a good block of it. Then Fannie and Freddie.
The question one might ask is what is the distribution of the new debt. I would bet you a lot that most of the new debt (since the lows) is in NYC, SF, LA, and Miami.
Similarly, both population and the rest of the economy have been growing in the last 10 years, so here’s the same figure, scaled to GDP.
So housing isn’t going through the same insane expansion that it was back then, and the collapse of another bubble isn’t imminent. In fact, if anything, the US is still working through the overhang of overbuilding that went on the last bubble. Sales of new homes are still way off 2008 levels.
That said, this is exactly why we don’t need to be loosening any of the restrictions that were put in place after the last downturn. If anything, the mess wasn’t really sorted out before, and needs work now to stop the same situation developing again.
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Why does the story link to a clip of Jeopardy?
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