Here's How Today's Higher Home Prices Differ From Bubble Era

An ongoing rebound in U.S. home prices is different from the credit-fueled run up that fanned the financial crisis and tipped the nation into recession when the real estate bubble burst, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco find in new research.

The distinction matters: San Francisco Fed President John Williams has recently warned that it’s important to monitor for asset price bubbles, saying that preventing imbalances from building is one argument in favor of raising interest rates off near-zero, where they have been held for seven years. Williams said in October that he was "starting to see signs of imbalances emerge in the form of high asset prices, especially in real estate," and that once such issues grow large, they are difficult to tackle.