Dive Brief:

• Bubble-like home prices, which have risen approximately 5% annually for the last two years, are not in danger of popping anytime soon, according to S&P/Case-Shiller.
• The big difference between the market's current skyrocketing home prices and the 2007-2008 housing collapse is the fact that mortgage debt is 13% less on single-family homes (with less than four people) than pre-Great Recession levels, according to Forbes. Before the housing crash, mortgage debt increased significantly.
• Even with a mortgage interest-rate increase, which industry analysts expect to happen before the end of the year, David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told Forbes that the effect on the market would be slow because, even with a slight bump, interest rates would still be at record lows.

Dive Insight:

Although he shrugged off possibilities of an imminent collapse in prices, Blitzer told Forbes that the current rate of home value appreciation was not something the market could sustain in the long-term. 

Earlier this week, Zillow reported that U.S. home prices continued to rise in August, with a year-over-year increase of 5.1%, and, according to the real estate website's Zillow Home Value Index, median home prices hit $188,100. However, issuing a similar caution as the one from Blitzer, Zillow's home-value forecast for the next year predicted that appreciation should slow to 2.7%. However, the standout news from Zillow was the fact that income growth, for the first time since 2011, has started to outpace home-price growth. The rate of rent appreciation has also slowed a bit, which means that potential homebuyers might now have an opportunity to save money to put toward a home purchase.

On the negative side, Zillow and other industry leaders have reported that despite a slight uptick in housing stock in some markets, overall inventories are still tight. Trulia reported that the country's available inventory fell 6.7% year over year in August, despite gains in hot Florida and California metros since August 2015. In a somewhat startling report from the National Association of Realtors, the association found that just to meet demand, 80% of U.S. metros would require a significant increase in new-home construction permits, with New York needing 218,541 permits, followed by Dallas (132,482), San Francisco (127,412), Miami (118,937), Chicago (94,457), Atlanta (93,627) and Seattle (73,135).