"Students coming out of college are burdened with more debt than traditionally they have been, and they are also coming into an economy that is underperforming previous recoveries," said Rick Palacios, a senior analyst at John Burns Real Estate Consulting LLC in Irvine, California. "These things pile on each other and tell us it's not going to help the housing recovery right now."

Latest Stimulus

Industry analysts including Robert Shiller of Yale University have said housing prices may fall for a sixth year. That in turn may weigh on consumer spending and hobble an economy starting to show some signs of strength.

"The state of the housing sector has been a key impediment to a faster recovery," Bernanke told the National Association of Homebuilders International Builders' Show in Orlando, Florida, on Feb. 10. He reiterated comments made at a press conference in Washington on Jan. 25 after the Federal Open Market Committee announced it would hold its benchmark lending rate near zero until at least late 2014, extending its target from mid-2013.

This latest stimulus step was intended "to convey to the market the extent to which there is support on the committee for maintaining rates at a low level for a significant time," Bernanke said at the press conference.

In September, the Fed announced plans to replace $400 billion of short-term debt in its portfolio with longer-term Treasuries in an effort to lower borrowing costs even more. The moves followed two rounds of large-scale asset purchases totaling $2.3 trillion that ended last June.

Mortgage Rates

Record-low mortgage rates haven't revived housing sales enough to spur the economic recovery. The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 3.87 percent as of Feb. 9, according to a Freddie Mac index, the lowest in data going back 40 years.

Before the recession, Americans were able to borrow against the ballooning prices of their homes to fund spending on education as well as cars, vacations and startup businesses. As home prices have tumbled, more Americans find themselves "underwater," or owing more on their mortgage than the value of their home, and with no home equity to borrow against.

"Homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages cannot tap home equity to pay for emergency health expenses or their children's college educations," Bernanke said last week.

'First Leg'

Palacios, who published research in December on student debt and housing, says first-time buyers are key to a housing recovery because they enable current owners to move into larger, pricier homes. "Move-up buyers need somebody to purchase their homes to move," he said in a telephone interview. "You need that first leg in the recovery to materialize."