Nationally, house prices are once again regularly in the news and have been rising for 43 straight months. In cities such as Boston, Denver and San Francisco, prices today are in fact higher than they were during the peak of the housing boom. In other areas, while prices have not regained the ground lost during the housing bust, they are rising and are not far off the peak prices of the last decade. That said, a housing bubble does not appear to be forming, and even if one is on the horizon, it certainly is not being credit-fueled, and thus is far less dangerous than what we recently experienced. In addition, back in 2006, housing affordability was dismal. At that time, a family earning the median income barely had enough income to qualify for a conventional conforming mortgage for the US median-priced home. Today, that same household has almost 170% of the income needed to qualify for the median-priced US home. This is because house prices are lower and interest rates are substantially lower than they were almost a decade ago. The ratio of all debt (most of which is mortgage debt) to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has fallen from 100% of GDP to just 80%. Moreover, despite the recent run-up in house prices, the mortgage debt-to-GDP ratio has continued to decline. This reflects a return to prudent lending standards and reduced household leverage. Collectively the improvement in these ratios strongly suggest that we are not in the midst of a credit-induced lending bubble. Also, housing starts remain about half of what they were during the prior peak. This means that our economy is far less dependent on residential construction activity than it was then. To review, while house prices are up, inflation-adjusted prices are still years away from peak levels. In addition, affordability remains high and both the price-to-rent and mortgage debt-to-GDP ratios are mush lower than they were. These indicators collectively indicate there is probably no bousing bubble, and even if there is one, it is not the result of increased household leverage, which is what primarily precipitated the last housing bust. So says Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D., President of GraphsandLaughs, LLC.