Prices in massively inefficient markets do not follow the supply + demand equilibrium. Beer is not an inefficient market. You're doing the absurd comparison.
It's more correct to say supply and demand still drive the overall average, but in a high-friction market of unique items, every single case is still a unique case. It's not like moving wheat bushels or RAM chips. When they sell oil, they mix up all the oil from different producers in the same reservoir, in the same tanks. Electricity travels in the same wires. Housing is nothing like that.
Housing doesn't follow economic principles that only apply to homogeneous bulk products, that's the point. Electricity is almost perfectly homogeneous. Then you have things like wheat and bread, which vary in quality but are close substitutes. Housing's at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. No two units are alike and they only trade every few years at best.
