With the aid of econometric modeling, it was reviewed whether rapidly increasing house prices necessarily imply the existence of a bubble that will eventually burst. Four alternative econometric methods to construct indicators of housing market imbalances for the US, Finland and Norway have been considered. The four approaches are used to study if house prices in these countries in the 2000s can be explained by underlying economic fundamentals, or whether the developments are best characterized by bubble dynamics. For the US, all measures unanimously suggest a bubble in the early to mid-2000s, whereas current US house prices are found to be aligned with economic fundamentals. Only one of the measures indicates imbalances in the Finnish housing market, while none of the measures suggest a bubble in Norway. Starting in the late 1990s, there was an unprecedented international house price boom accompanying the favorable economic situation in most industrialized countries. The boom was in many cases succeeded by a significant bust, with real house prices falling by more than 30 percent in several countries. The consequences for the real economy following the bust in house prices have been severe, and it was one of the factors contributing to the deepest downturn in the world economy since the Great Depression (see e.g., Mian et al. (2013) and Mian and Sufi (2014)). The collapse culminated with the meltdown of the US housing market and financial system in the autumn of 2008 – the epicenter for the ensuing global financial crisis that is still putting a strain on global economic recovery. Against this background, I ask whether econometric methods can be used to detect pending imbalances in the housing market.