What happens when you take an already scorching-hot product and put it on sale?
Fourth, a few housing experts, such as Stuart Gabriel of the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate, suggest the use of adjustable-rate mortgages has become so widespread that the prices of housing markets have simply inflated to reflect the added purchasing power ARMs have given home buyers.
At the University of Central Florida, finance professor David Scott predicts Florida's housing market will slowly cool rather than suffer any ugly bubble bursting.
"Eventually, rising interest rates will curtail this situation, but long-term rates are still advancing at a slow pace," he said.
Translation? Even as more home buyers stretch to buy ever more expensive homes, rising mortgage rates eventually will make more houses unaffordable. That may cool the overheated housing market.
But it may leave some new homeowners feeling strapped by an oversized mortgage and diminished prospects for something once taken for granted: ongoing housing appreciation.