U.S. mortgage applications rose last week, largely reflecting a jump in demand for home refinancing loans as interest rates slid to a five-week low, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.
Applications for loans to buy a home, an early indicator of sales, rose for a third consecutive week. The trend bodes well for the hard-hit U.S. housing market, which has been showing nascent signs of stabilization.
The housing market, which already has been battered by the worst collapse since the Great Depression, could be setting itself for another bubble, well-known economist Robert Shiller told CNBC.
With home affordability at a 40-year high, there is "absolutley" a possibility that the housing market will face another bubble in the next five years, said Shiller, an economics professor at Yale, co-founder of MacroMarkets and co-developer of the monthly Case-Shiller home price index.