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anyone focusing solely on demand (pop growth) is missing 50% of the supply/demand equation.  Population growth and house prices do not exist in a vacuum.  If sufficient supply is being brought to market fast enough to satiate new demand, we would expect that population growth should have a negligible effect on house prices on a macro scale.  Additionally, factors such as availability and cost of credit have a far more significant impact on house prices at the macro level.

Note that a 'soft landing' in which prices stabilize and construction levels normalize would mean shedding 2% of the labour force, likely leading to a double digit unemployment rate.  This is one of the many reasons I think it will be difficult to orchestrate a soft landing in housing.

A bubble occurs when exaggerated expectations of future prices increase unusual demand either by people who fear being priced out of a market or by investors hoping to make a lot of money fast. A bubble is a self-fulfilling prophecy for a while, as successive rounds of buyers push prices higher and higher. But the willingness to pay higher and higher prices in fragile: It will end whenever buyers perceive that prices are no longer going up. Hence bubbles carry the seeds of their own destruction. Only time is needed for bubbles to end.