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Did affordable housing legislation contribute to the subprime securities boom?

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Listed:
  • Andra C. Ghent
  • Ruben Hernandez-Murillo
  • Michael T. Owyang

Abstract

No. In this paper we use a regression discontinuity approach to investigate whether affordable housing policies influenced origination or affected prices of subprime mortgages. We use merged loan-level data on non-prime securitized mortgages with individual- and neighborhood-level data for California and Florida. We find no evidence that lenders increased subprime originations or altered pricing around the discrete eligibility cutoffs for the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) affordable housing goals or the Community Reinvestment Act. Our results indicate that the extensive purchases of risky private-label mortgage-backed securities by the GSEs were not due to affordable housing mandates.

Suggested Citation

  • Andra C. Ghent & Ruben Hernandez-Murillo & Michael T. Owyang, 2012. "Did affordable housing legislation contribute to the subprime securities boom?," Working Papers 2012-005, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2012-005
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    1. Moulton, Shawn, 2014. "Did affordable housing mandates cause the subprime mortgage crisis?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 21-38.
    2. Sumit Agarwal & Efraim Benmelech & Nittai Bergman & Amit Seru, 2012. "Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead to Risky Lending?," NBER Working Papers 18609, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    Cited by:

    1. Sumit Agarwal & Efraim Benmelech & Nittai Bergman & Amit Seru, 2012. "Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead to Risky Lending?," NBER Working Papers 18609, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Lee, Hyojung & Bostic, Raphael W., 2020. "Bank adaptation to neighborhood change: Mortgage lending and the Community Reinvestment Act," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    3. Dan Immergluck, 2015. "A look back: what we now know about the causes of the US mortgage crisis," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 269-285, November.
    4. Agata M. Lozinskaia & Evgeniy M. Ozhegov & Alexander M. Karminsky, 2016. "Discontinuity in Relative Credit Losses: Evidence from Defaults on Government-Insured Residential Mortgages," HSE Working papers WP BRP 55/FE/2016, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    5. Tyler T. Yang & Jessie Y. Zhang, 2016. "Contagious Real Estate Cycle: Case of the US Subprime Related Crisis," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 19(2), pages 171-196.
    6. Lei Ding & Leonard I. Nakamura, 2017. "“Don't Know What You Got Till It’s Gone” — The Effects of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) on Mortgage Lending in the Philadelphia Market," Working Papers 17-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    7. Rossen Valkanov & Andra Ghent, 2014. "Complexity in Structured Finance: Financial Wizardry or Smoke and Mirrors," 2014 Meeting Papers 104, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Adelino, Manuel & Scott Frame, W. & Gerardi, Kristopher, 2017. "The effect of large investors on asset quality: Evidence from subprime mortgage securities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 34-51.
    9. Christopher L. Foote & Kristopher S. Gerardi & Paul S. Willen, 2012. "Why Did So Many People Make So Many Ex Post Bad Decisions? The Causes of the Foreclosure Crisis," NBER Working Papers 18082, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Daniel Ringo, 2023. "Mortgage Lending, Default, and the Community Reinvestment Act," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(1), pages 77-102, February.
    11. Ronel Elul, 2015. "The government-sponsored enterprises: past and future," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Q1, pages 11-20.
    12. Franklin Allen & Xian Gu, 2018. "The Interplay between Regulations and Financial Stability," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 53(2), pages 233-248, June.
    13. Jason Thomas & Robert Order, 2020. "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Risk-Taking and the Option to Change Strategy," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 270-307, April.
    14. 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.
    15. Neil Bhutta, 2014. "The ins and outs of mortgage debt during the housing boom and bust," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-91, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

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    Keywords

    Subprime mortgage; Community Reinvestment Act of 1977; Government-sponsored enterprises;
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