Powell Says Fed Watching House Prices Carefully

Q: Are you concerned about local housing bubbles?

- A: We monitor the housing market very carefully. I would say that pre-pandemic, was a very different housing market than it was before the global financial crisis. Households were in very good shape financially compared to where they were. Most people who got mortgages were people with pretty high credit scores. We don't have many people over leveraged and owning a lot of houses.

• There's no question housing prices are going up. We're watching that carefully. It's partly because there's clearly strong demand and not a lot of supply right now. Builders are struggling to keep up with the demand. If you're an entry level housing buyer, this is a problem because it just is going to be that much harder for people to get that first house.
• That's a problem. It's part of a strong economy with people having money to spend and wanting to invest in housing. So in that sense it's good. My hope would be that over time housing builders can react to this demand and come up with more supply and workers will come back to work in that industry. It's not only good to have prices go up this much and we're watching it very carefully. I don't see the kind of financial stability concerns, though, that really do reside around the housing sector.