I love statistics and poring over data as much as anyone - but you need an element of scepticism and to critically analyse the data to understand what it is saying.
A house price to earnings ratio seems like a simple enough indicator. But there are other societal factors that explain the upward trend, and thus reduce the validity of the 'this proves the market is broken' conclusion.
For instance - is the earnings figure based on that year's income from paid work for a single worker, or an estimated figure based on future combined household income from both paid work and other sources? Mortgage approvals are based on the latter ...
The long term labour market trends have seen household incomes evolve from being mainly from a single breadwinner > main breadwinner plus partner earning some pin money > two main earners
Then, the pattern of long-term earnings over a career needs to be considered. A 16 year old school leaver getting a trade and having a job for life, but where 'life' meant medically incapacitated by 55, is not the norm any more. Professional workers can get significant premiums for their skills early in their careers and remain in very well paid work for much, much longer - easily 50 yrs or longer for safe, sedentary, indoor work.
Then there is the pressure from alternative spending categories. Since the 70s, our membership of the EEC meant that the costs of many commodities reduced in price year on year. Travel, Food, Energy, Consumer goods - all have become much cheaper as earnings have risen. This left people with a lot of spare money available to bid up house prices and 'win' the battle for the dream home. It is the recent unwinding of these cumulative benefits and the pressure from rising food, energy and travel costs that makes housing seem unaffordable today. But that's not a problem of the housing market. (It is a problem for the housing market, for sure - but that's a different topic).
Finally - general inflation was low for the last fifteen years, but it was much higher for much more of the period shown in those charts. Whilst displaying data as "real house prices" seems to address this, the base year that is chosen makes a huge difference. The gradient of the line changes markedly depending on whether you pick a period of low inflation followed by high inflation, than if you pick a period of high inflation followed by low inflation, as the base year.
It's really not as simple as pointing to a chart and saying "see!". Many people have bought houses in each of the past decades and overwhelmingly most will do just fine. In each of those decades some people didn't buy houses, and they are furious because that decision has made them poorer. Whilst I sympathise, I don't conclude that a fair solution is for everyone to be made poorer just so that those people feel better. And for new to the market potential FTBs? Who knows what challenges life will throw at them during their lifetimes, their careers, and the periods of their mortgages. Ten years from now, we might think that half a million for a house is an absolute bargain. Nobody can tell. But if they are enterprising, ambitious and hard-working - they'll be fine.