IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/reesec/v49y2021i3p733-777.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

FHA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Great Recession

Author

Listed:
  • Wayne Passmore
  • Shane M. Sherlund

Abstract

Did government mortgage programs mitigate the adverse economic effects of the 2007–2009 Great Recession? We find that counties with greater participation in precrisis government mortgage programs experienced less‐severe economic downturns during the Great Recession. In particular, counties with higher proportions of Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lending prior to the financial crisis had smaller increases in serious delinquency and foreclosure rates; smaller declines in mortgage purchase originations, house prices, and new automobile purchases; and smaller increases in unemployment rates. Some of these effects were still evident in 2014 despite numerous new government policies and programs designed to promote economic recovery. We conclude that preexisting mortgage programs with more stable underwriting standards, credit risk pricing and liquidity played a key role in supporting economic conditions during the Great Recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Wayne Passmore & Shane M. Sherlund, 2021. "FHA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Great Recession," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 49(3), pages 733-777, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:reesec:v:49:y:2021:i:3:p:733-777
    DOI: 10.1111/1540-6229.12296
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6229.12296
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1540-6229.12296?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sumit Agarwal & Gene Amromin & Itzhak Ben-David & Souphala Chomsisengphet & Tomasz Piskorski & Amit Seru, 2017. "Policy Intervention in Debt Renegotiation: Evidence from the Home Affordable Modification Program," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(3), pages 654-712.
    2. Giovanni Favara & Jean Imbs, 2015. "Credit Supply and the Price of Housing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 958-992, March.
    3. Becker, Sascha O. & Egger, Peter H. & von Ehrlich, Maximilian, 2012. "Too much of a good thing? On the growth effects of the EU's regional policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 648-668.
    4. Yuliya Demyanyk & Otto Van Hemert, 2011. "Understanding the Subprime Mortgage Crisis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1848-1880.
    5. Joshua Abel & Andreas Fuster, 2021. "How Do Mortgage Refinances Affect Debt, Default, and Spending? Evidence from HARP," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 254-291, April.
    6. Erik Hurst & Benjamin J. Keys & Amit Seru & Joseph Vavra, 2016. "Regional Redistribution through the US Mortgage Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 2982-3028, October.
    7. Atif Mian & Kamalesh Rao & Amir Sufi, 2013. "Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(4), pages 1687-1726.
    8. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2011. "House Prices, Home Equity-Based Borrowing, and the US Household Leverage Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2132-2156, August.
    9. Nadauld, Taylor D. & Sherlund, Shane M., 2013. "The impact of securitization on the expansion of subprime credit," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 454-476.
    10. Carlos A. Flores & Alfonso Flores-Lagunes & Arturo Gonzalez & Todd C. Neumann, 2012. "Estimating the Effects of Length of Exposure to Instruction in a Training Program: The Case of Job Corps," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(1), pages 153-171, February.
    11. Pedro Gete & Michael Reher, 2018. "Mortgage Supply and Housing Rents," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(12), pages 4884-4911.
    12. Marco Di Maggio & Amir Kermani, 2017. "Credit-Induced Boom and Bust," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(11), pages 3711-3758.
    13. Neil Bhutta & Benjamin J. Keys, 2016. "Interest Rates and Equity Extraction during the Housing Boom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(7), pages 1742-1774, July.
    14. Richard K. Green & Susan M. Wachter, 2005. "The American Mortgage in Historical and International Context," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 93-114, Fall.
    15. Christopher Mayer & Karen Pence & Shane M. Sherlund, 2009. "The Rise in Mortgage Defaults," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 27-50, Winter.
    16. Rodney Ramcharan & Stéphane Verani & Skander J. Van Den Heuvel, 2016. "From Wall Street to Main Street: The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Consumer Credit Supply," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(3), pages 1323-1356, June.
    17. W. Scott Frame, 2015. "Introduction to Special Issue: Government Involvement in Residential Mortgage Markets," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(4), pages 807-819, November.
    18. Efraim Benmelech & Ralf R. Meisenzahl & Rodney Ramcharan, 2017. "The Real Effects of Liquidity During the Financial Crisis: Evidence from Automobiles," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(1), pages 317-365.
    19. Sumit Agarwal & Gene Amromin & Souphala Chomsisengphet & Tim Landvoigt & Tomasz Piskorski & Amit Seru & Vincent Yao, 2015. "Mortgage Refinancing, Consumer Spending, and Competition: Evidence from the Home Affordable Refinancing Program," NBER Working Papers 21512, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Manuel Adelino & Antoinette Schoar & Felipe Severino, 2012. "Credit Supply and House Prices: Evidence from Mortgage Market Segmentation," NBER Working Papers 17832, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Piskorski, Tomasz & Seru, Amit, 2021. "Debt relief and slow recovery: A decade after Lehman," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 1036-1059.
    2. Daniel I. García, 2018. "Employment in the Great Recession : How Important Were Household Credit Supply Shocks?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-074, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Elliot Anenberg & Aurel Hizmo & Edward Kung & Raven Molloy, 2019. "Measuring mortgage credit availability: A frontier estimation approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(6), pages 865-882, September.
    4. Conklin, James N. & Frame, W. Scott & Gerardi, Kristopher & Liu, Haoyang, 2022. "Villains or scapegoats? The role of subprime borrowers in driving the U.S. housing boom," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    5. Daniel García, 2020. "Employment in the Great Recession: How Important Were Household Credit Supply Shocks?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(1), pages 165-203, February.
    6. Franziska Bremus & Thomas Krause & Felix Noth, 2021. "Lender-Specific Mortgage Supply Shocks and Macroeconomic Performance in the United States," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1936, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Adam M. Guren & Arvind Krishnamurthy & Timothy J. Mcquade, 2021. "Mortgage Design in an Equilibrium Model of the Housing Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(1), pages 113-168, February.
    8. Diamond, William & Landvoigt, Tim, 2022. "Credit cycles with market-based household leverage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 726-753.
    9. Bo Li, 2024. "Testing Business Cycle Theories: Evidence from the Great Recession," Papers 2403.04104, arXiv.org.
    10. Bronson Argyle & Taylor Nadauld & Christopher Palmer & Ryan Pratt, 2021. "The Capitalization of Consumer Financing into Durable Goods Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(1), pages 169-210, February.
    11. Li, Yongjia & Tahsin, Salman, 2021. "Home price appreciation and residential lending standards," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    12. Lewellen, Stefan & Williams, Emily, 2021. "Did technology contribute to the housing boom? Evidence from MERS," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 1244-1261.
    13. Jakučionytė, Eglė & Singh, Swapnil, 2022. "Bowling alone, buying alone: The decline of co-borrowers in the US mortgage market," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(PB).
    14. Griffin, John M. & Kruger, Samuel & Maturana, Gonzalo, 2021. "What drove the 2003–2006 house price boom and subsequent collapse? Disentangling competing explanations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 1007-1035.
    15. William Diamond & Tim Landvoigt, 2019. "Credit Cycles with Market Based Household Leverage," 2019 Meeting Papers 162, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Egle Jakucionyte & Swapnil Singh, 2020. "Bowling Alone, Buying Alone: The Decline of Co-Borrowers in the US Mortgage Market," Bank of Lithuania Working Paper Series 78, Bank of Lithuania.
    17. Elliot Anenberg & Aurel Hizmo & Edward Kung & Raven S. Molloy, 2017. "Measuring Mortgage Credit Availability : A Frontier Estimation Approach," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-101, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Bremus, Franziska & Krause, Thomas & Noth, Felix, 2021. "Lender-specific mortgage supply shocks and macroeconomic performance in the United States," IWH Discussion Papers 3/2021, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    19. Shi, Yining, 2022. "Financial liberalization and house prices: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    20. Albanesi, Stefania & DeGiorgi, Giacomo & Nosal, Jaromir, 2022. "Credit growth and the financial crisis: A new narrative," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 118-139.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:reesec:v:49:y:2021:i:3:p:733-777. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/areueea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.