Empirical studies do indeed show that excessive private (and public) sector indebtedness, asset price misalignments, international linkages of banks, and high external imbalances are drivers of financial crisis (Borio and Drehmann 2009). Furthermore, banking crises have often been preceded by real estate price booms (Reinhart and Rogoff 2008a, 2008b).
This was the case in the 2008 global financial crisis, but it is also true of earlier crises in the 1970s to 1990s in, for example, Spain, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Asset price booms are particularly harmful if they are debt-financed (Jordà, Schularick and Taylor 2015).