I happen to think it may be different this time. Lowering interest rates may destroy the housing market rather than save it.
Over the last several years the yen carry trade has provided the housing market with a lot of liquidity as investors borrow yen at a low interest rate and invest in the U.S. at a higher rate. Much of this money goes into the bonds we use to pay for our homes. If we drop our rates past a certain point, the money will flow out of the U.S. at least as fast as it flowed in. The system hiccuped last week, and we briefly saw a bit of the effects of a tiny bit of this outflow.
In decades past lowering interest rates helped create more liquidity and higher rates meant less. Ironically, today I believe the reverse is true. Keeping our interest rates relatively high will keep the liquidity flowing in and be much more beneficial to (temporarily) sustaining the housing bubble. Lowering interest rates will reveal our housing market (and stock market, and bond market) for the bubble that it is.
