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Collateral Damage: The Impact of Foreclosures on New Home Mortgage Lending in the 1930s

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  • Price Fishback
  • Sebastián Fleitas
  • Jonathan Rose
  • Kenneth Snowden

Abstract

Foreclosures led to severe disruptions in home mortgage lending during the recent Great Recession and the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is difficult to measure these impacts in the modern market where origination, funding and servicing are separated within complex lending structures, but during the 1930s local building & loans (B&Ls) combined all three functions. We measure the impact of foreclosures on new mortgage lending using a panel of all B&Ls in 4 states. The foreclosure overhang explains about 30 percent of the drop in new mortgage lending by B&Ls as the housing crisis intensified between 1930 and 1935.

Suggested Citation

  • Price Fishback & Sebastián Fleitas & Jonathan Rose & Kenneth Snowden, 2018. "Collateral Damage: The Impact of Foreclosures on New Home Mortgage Lending in the 1930s," NBER Working Papers 25246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25246
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • N12 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • N22 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

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