Apurva Gundaria’s team at Goldman now expects prices to grow beyond earlier forecasts, prompting an increase of its home price appreciation estimate to 4.7% for 2021 and 4.6% for 2022, up significantly from prior targets of 3.7% and 2.4%, respectively.

Home seekers locked out of the market can blame a “historic supply-demand mismatch driven, at least in part, by the pandemic,” according to Gundaria’s team.

Another factor would be low, 30-year mortgage rates that have kept credit flowing, despite loftier price tags for homes and the more than 25% annual drop in single-family homes for sale.

“Supply of single-family homes available for sale plunged to an all-time low in early 2020 and never recovered,” the team wrote in a weekly note.

“Mortgage rates fell below 3% for the first time last year and found a bottom around 2.7% in recent weeks. We expect mortgage rates to remain below 3% throughout 2021, keeping housing relatively affordable by historical standards.”

The U.S. housing market has been a bright spot for the economy during a brutal pandemic, which first hit poorer, urban Black and Latino workers harder, but then tore through rural, mostly white communities.

President Joe Biden on Friday warned that Republicans who want to “do nothing, or not enough,” in terms of his $1.9 trillion pandemic aid proposal risk pushing off a return to full employment in the U.S. to 2025.

“I can’t in good conscience do that,” Biden said, in a briefing that followed a disappointing monthly jobs report. The president also vowed to press on and deliver his relief package, including checks of $1,400 to households, even without Republican support.

Goldman economists included both direct payments to households and expanded unemployment in their baseline economic forecast for fiscal stimulus, which Gundaria’s team called “two ingredients” of a constructive backdrop for housing demand.

U.S. stocks brushed off Friday’s data showing a stalling out of the recovery in the jobs market, with the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.39%, Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.30% and Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.57% all trading near record territory. The 30-year Treasury note yield TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.168% rose 11.8 basis points for the week to 1.973%.