It’s a question that resurfaces every economic cycle, creeping into the psyche of the real estate industry like English Ivy along the edges of a home. One financial analyst believes it’s happening, but real estate economists disagree.

Are we in a housing bubble?

Dave Kranzler, a co-manager of a precious metals and mining stock investment fund in Denver, wrote on his website Investment Research Dynamics earlier this week that he believes an even bigger housing bubble than 2008 is set to burst.

“Housing is dropping and it’s demand-driven, not supply-driven — all three housing market reports released two weeks ago showed industry deterioration,” Kranzler wrote in the July 2 post, citing declines in homebuilder sentiment, new construction permits and existing home sales.

In fact, the homebuilder sentiment index suffered its fourth decline in May since hitting its peak in December while falling 10 points below Wall Street analysts’ predictions. Permits for new construction, meanwhile, fell 4.6 percent, according to the most recent housing starts data released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And existing home sales fell for the second straight month while the seasonally adjusted annualized rate fell below Wall Street analysts’ estimates, according to Kranzler. In short, he isn’t buying spin that the decline is due to low inventory.

“The month’s supply for May increased from April and, at 4.1 months, is above the average month’s supply for the trailing 12 months,” he said. “It’s also above the average month’s supply number for all of 2017. If low inventory is holding back pent-up demand, then May sales should have soared, especially given that May is historically one of the best months seasonally for home sales.”

A number of economists, however, disagreed when asked if a housing bubble is afoot.

Lawrence Yun, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, doesn’t believe a housing bubble exists, but he does worry some market issues persist.

“Home prices are clearly rising too fast, they have outpaced people’s income growth for the past five years,” he said. “Is it a bubble in terms of potential to go down? The answer is no, because the fundamental supporting factors of today’s housing market versus what happened 10 years ago are drastically different.”

The distinction between today’s market and the pre-crash housing market, he said, are the tighter underwriting standards created in the aftermath of the 2008 housing crises and the current dearth of new residential construction.

“There is a massive housing shortage,” Yun said. “It’s fundamentally different in terms of both demand and supply.”