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Roughly 15 years after a housing bubble triggered the worst U.S. financial disaster since the Great Depression, some observers are voicing concern that the industry has fallen into another bubble.
Home prices are soaring, despite high mortgage rates that in theory should crimp demand and push down prices. The share of U.S. homeowners under serious financial strain, meanwhile, jumped slightly at the outset of this year when compared with the final months of 2023.
Despite these trends, experts who spoke with ABC News largely rejected fears of a housing bubble.
The frothy prices and the strain they place on prospective homebuyers are a cause for concern, they said, but the price hikes owe to an old-fashioned imbalance between supply and demand rather than the frenzied speculation characteristic of a bubble.
"The price increases have been quite remarkable but there aren't abnormal factors driving them," Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of REALTORS®, told ABC News. "It's simply supply and demand -- the normal reason."
For nine consecutive months, year-over-year existing-home prices have climbed, according to data released by the National Association of REALTORS® in March. Going back further, the median price of an existing home has jumped nearly 40% over the past four years, NAR data shows.