There is an old saying on Wall Street: "No one rings a bell at the top."
Guess what? The bell, like in 2006, isn't ringing.

The S&P Case-Shiller index of US home prices rose in September to the highest level since July 2006, when the most recent housing boom topped out.

"Boom" is an interesting word. A few years ago they used a different "b" word for the exact same home prices.

House prices have been rising as a healthy jobs market and historically low mortgage rates have made homeownership more appealing.

"Healthy" is another I wouldn't use. For instance, does this chart look healthy?

"The new peak set by the S&P Case-Shiller CoreLogic National Index will be seen as marking a shift from the housing recovery to the hoped-for start of a new advance," David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in the release.

"Recovery" is yet another word I wouldn't use.
I was thinking "re-inflate".
Consider this chart to fill in the gaps.

Home prices have spilled over into rent prices.

A new study by three economists, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, establishes a few facts that may be useful in helping to assure you that no, you’re not crazy—it really is getting harder to pay for a roof over your head. Try dropping these in your next argument with your landlord:

• Since 1970, “the price of housing (or shelter) services has risen almost 40 percent relative to other goods.”
• During the same time period, “the percentage of households facing ‘extreme’ [costing more than 50 percent of their income] housing affordability burdens rose from 16 to 28 percent, while the share facing ‘moderate’ [costing more than 30 percent of their income] burdens rose from 30 to 53 percent.”
• In 1970, the median renter spent a fifth of their income on rent; now, that number has risen to nearly a third of their income.
• Income and wealth inequality have risen drastically since 1970, and renters as a group have seen smaller gains than homeowners. And households today have fewer people on average than they used to (they “have shrunk in size by almost 30 percent”)—which raises housing demand and exacerbates the affordability crisis for renters even more.

Housing Bubble 2.0 does not have the excess of cheap debt that Housing Bubble 1.0 had, but it does have the unaffordable price-wage dynamic.

One last thing to consider is what the recent hike in interest rates since the election has done.

The fast rise in rates has spurred homeowners to pull back from refinancing their mortgages. Applications dropped 3% in the week ended Nov. 18 from the prior one, the seventh consecutive weekly decline, and the second since Election Day, according to data released Wednesday by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The MBA estimates refinances will fall 46% next year, to $484 billion, which will hurt Americans’ ability to free up cash by reducing the cost of their monthly mortgages. The fall in refinances also will hit an important area of consumer-loan growth for banks. To slow the possible damage, banks already are pitching riskier loans that come with adjustable interest rates or allow borrowers to pull more equity out of their homes.

“The increase in rate has shocked consumers…I didn’t expect it either,” said Dave Norris, chief revenue officer at LoanDepot, the 10th largest mortgage lender in the U.S. by loan volume.

This month’s rate increase has eliminated a large share of borrowers for whom refinancing would make financial sense. Before the election, 70% of all borrowers with a 30-year fixed-rate conforming mortgage stood to incur at least a half a percentage point in savings by refinancing. Now only 35% of borrowers are eligible for such savings, said Walter Schmidt, who tracks mortgage-backed securities at FTN Financial

At what point do these insane prices burst the bubble?