In recent times, the attention has been focused on household balance sheets, and on house prices in particular, where there has been a big run-up over the past five years, associated with a substantial increase in household debt. BIS Review 58/2002  7  The chart shows a long-run time series of the ratio of household assets to current household income.
Assets here include financial assets, and physical assets (mainly the dwelling stock). For many years, assets were about 4 times annual income. Over the past 15 years, that has risen to about 7 times. That is quite a striking result.