Most of the time, central bank watchers must content themselves with obsessively parsing carefully worded statements about monetary policy and the economy.

But when central bankers give speeches before fellow economists or offer testimony before political bodies, their prepared remarks, though presumably edited to exhibit the appropriate amount of circumspection, tend to offer a greater degree of candor.

That was the case this week with Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Glenn Stevens’ speech before the Melbourne Economic Forum.

In recent statements on monetary policy, Stevens’ observations about the state of the country’s housing market were fairly anodyne, noting simply that dwelling prices continue to rise. Statements further back occasionally noted the role of investors in driving home prices higher.

These details were merely intended to telegraph that this was a key area of concern that the bank would be closely monitoring.

But in his remarks this week, Stevens went considerably further than these bland assessments.

According to Bloomberg, Stevens said he’s concerned about the double-digit growth in investor finance. “I have certain skepticism about macroprudential tools as a panacea,” he continued, “but I remain open to using them if it seems sensible to do so and that’s the kind of thing we have in mind right now.”

So what is macroprudential regulation? Though the term originated in the 1970s, the idea came into vogue following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), when central bankers realized the limitations of monetary policy in addressing the situation and sought other tools to rein in systemic risk.

Though Stevens did not specify what his particular approach might entail in this regard, it’s clear that his focus is more on real estate investors than, say, first-time homebuyers. He’s concerned that speculators could drive prices to unsustainable highs that would exacerbate the eventual correction.

The Age says among the RBA’s possible steps could be a move to tighten “interest rate buffer guidelines, under which banks apply an interest rate add-on to current mortgage rates when assessing a borrower’s capacity to service their loans.” This policy would be implemented through coordination with the country’s banking regulator.

The Melbourne-based newspaper notes that Stevens previously observed that “requiring banks to hold a bigger buffer was a promising potential macroprudential response to rising house prices when he appeared before a parliamentary committee in March.”

Australia’s housing market never underwent the type of severe correction that US homeowners suffered during the global downturn. Indeed, the trough in prices was relatively shallow. As a result, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says Australia has the world’s third most overvalued housing market on a price-to-income basis.

And with Australia’s home prices rising from a comparatively higher base than those of its developed-world peers, analysts and economists have been sounding the alarm for at least a year about a possible real estate bubble.

Of course, the RBA has been caught in a difficult situation. With the peak in resource sector investment now past, the central bank has been keen to help spur growth in the non-mining sectors of the economy.

But notwithstanding Stevens’ newfound interest in macroprudential regulation, the RBA’s principal tool is monetary policy. And that means rate-sensitive sectors such as housing and finance were always going to be most responsive to a rate-cutting cycle.

The hope was that since housing touches so many other corners of the economy that an accommodative monetary policy–the RBA’s benchmark cash rate has been at an all-time low for over a year now–would eventually flow through to the rest of the economy.

However, it’s still unclear whether that’s actually happened. And any effort to raise rates across the board could choke off growth in the broader economy. So the RBA is clearly seeking a limited way to curb lending to real estate investors without impinging upon the economy as a whole. It’s an exceedingly delicate balance, but it just might work.