IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v71y2011i02p307-337_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Repairing a Mortgage Crisis: HOLC Lending and Its Impact on Local Housing Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Courtemanche, Charles
  • Snowden, Kenneth

Abstract

Between 1933 and 1936 the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation purchased more than a million delinquent mortgages from private lenders and refinanced those loans for the borrowers. Its primary goal was to break the cycle of foreclosure, forced property sales and decreases in home values that was affecting local housing markets throughout the nation. We find that the volume of HOLC lending was related to measures of distress in local (county-level) housing markets and that these interventions increased 1940 median home values and homeownership rates, but not new home building.“[A] tremendous surge of residential building in the [last] decade… was matched by an ever-increasing supply of homes sold on easy terms [and only]… a small decline in prices was necessary to wipe out this equity. Unfortunately, deflationary processes are never satisfied with small declines in values. They feed upon themselves and produce results out of all proportion to their causes… In the field of real estate finance, particularly, we have depended so much upon credit that our whole value structure can be thrown out of balance by relatively slight shocks. When such a delicate structure is once disorganized, it is a tremendous task to get it into a position where it can again function normally.†1Henry Hoagland, 1935

Suggested Citation

  • Courtemanche, Charles & Snowden, Kenneth, 2011. "Repairing a Mortgage Crisis: HOLC Lending and Its Impact on Local Housing Markets," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(2), pages 307-337, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:71:y:2011:i:02:p:307-337_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050711001549/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rosalind Tough, 1951. "The Life Cycle of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(4), pages 324-331.
    2. Fishback, Price V. & Kantor, Shawn & Wallis, John Joseph, 2003. "Can the New Deal's three Rs be rehabilitated? A program-by-program, county-by-county analysis," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 278-307, July.
    3. Mishkin, Frederic S., 1978. "The Household Balance Sheet and the Great Depression," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(4), pages 918-937, December.
    4. Kenneth A. Snowden, 2010. "The Anatomy of a Residential Mortgage Crisis: A Look Back to the 1930s," NBER Working Papers 16244, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. David C. Wheelock, 2008. "The federal response to home mortgage distress: lessons from the Great Depression," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 90(May), pages 133-148.
    6. O. Emre Ergungor, 2007. "On the resolution of financial crises: the Swedish experience," Policy Discussion Papers, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Jun.
    7. Leo Grebler & David M. Blank & Louis Winnick, 1956. "Capital Formation in Residential Real Estate: Trends and Prospects," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number greb56-1, August.
    8. Engerman,Stanley L. & Hoffman,Philip T. & Rosenthal,Jean-Laurent & Sokoloff,Kenneth L. (ed.), 2003. "Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521820547, October.
    9. Snowden, Kenneth A, 1997. "Building and loan associations in the U.S., 1880-1893: the origins of localization in the residential mortgage market," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 227-250, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eugene N. White, 2014. "Lessons from the Great American Real Estate Boom and Bust of the 1920s," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 115-158, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Trevor M. Kollmann & Price V. Fishback, 2011. "The New Deal, Race, and Home Ownership in the 1920s and 1930s," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 366-370, May.
    3. Agustín S. Bénétrix & Barry Eichengreen & Kevin H. O'Rourke, 2012. "How housing slumps end [Financial institutions and markets across countries and over time: data and analysis]," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 27(72), pages 647-692.
    4. Jonathan D. Rose, 2012. "The prolonged resolution of troubled real estate lenders during the 1930s," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2012-31, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Quincy, Sarah, 2022. "Income shocks and housing spillovers: Evidence from the World War I Veterans’ Bonus," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    6. Price V. Fishback & Alfonso Flores-Lagunes & William C. Horrace & Shawn Kantor & Jaret Treber, 2011. "The Influence of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation on Housing Markets During the 1930s," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1782-1813.
    7. Jonathan D. Rose, 2014. "The Prolonged Resolution of Troubled Real Estate Lenders during the 1930s," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 245-284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Fishback, Price & Fleitas, Sebastian & Rose, Jonathan & Snowden, Ken, 2020. "Collateral Damage: The Impact of Foreclosures on New Home Mortgage Lending in the 1930s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(3), pages 853-885, September.
    2. Fleitas, Sebastian & Fishback, Price & Snowden, Kenneth, 2016. "Economic Crisis and the Demise of a Popular Contractual Form: Building and Loan Mortgage Contracts in the 1930s," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 275, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Michael Brocker & Christopher Hanes, 2014. "The 1920s American Real Estate Boom and the Downturn of the Great Depression: Evidence from City Cross-Sections," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 161-201, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Siodla, James, 2020. "Debt and taxes: Fiscal strain and US city budgets during the Great Depression," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    5. Jonathan D. Rose, 2011. "The Incredible HOLC? Mortgage Relief during the Great Depression," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(6), pages 1073-1107, September.
    6. Kenneth Snowden, 2014. "A Historiography of Early NBER Housing and Mortgage Research," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 15-36, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Fleitas, Sebastian & Fishback, Price & Snowden, Kenneth, 2018. "Economic crisis and the demise of a popular contractual form: Building & Loans in the 1930s," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 28-44.
    8. Christian Alexander Belabed, 2015. "Income Distribution and the Great Depression," IMK Working Paper 153-2015, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    9. Kenneth A. Snowden, 2010. "The Anatomy of a Residential Mortgage Crisis: A Look Back to the 1930s," NBER Working Papers 16244, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Sebastián Fleitas & Price Fishback & Kenneth Snowden, 2015. "Forbearance by Contract: How Building and Loans Mitigated the Mortgage Crisis of the 1930s," NBER Working Papers 21786, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Alexander J. Field, 2013. "The Interwar Housing Cycle in the Light of 2001-2011: A Comparative Historical Approach," NBER Working Papers 18796, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Kenneth Snowden & Eugene N. White & Price Fishback, 2014. "Introduction to "Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective"," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 1-13, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Quincy, Sarah, 2022. "Income shocks and housing spillovers: Evidence from the World War I Veterans’ Bonus," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    14. Mehmet Balcilar & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2014. "Housing and the Great Depression," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(24), pages 2966-2981, August.
    15. Jonathan D. Rose, 2022. "Reassessing the magnitude of housing price declines and the use of leverage in the Depressions of the 1890s and 1930s," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 50(4), pages 907-930, December.
    16. David C. Wheelock, 2008. "Government response to home mortgage distress: lessons from the Great Depression," Working Papers 2008-038, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    17. Daniel K. Fetter, 2014. "The Twentieth-Century Increase in U.S. Home Ownership: Facts and Hypotheses," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 329-350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Jonathan D. Rose, 2014. "The Prolonged Resolution of Troubled Real Estate Lenders during the 1930s," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 245-284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Rose, Jonathan & Snowden, Kenneth, 2012. "The New Deal and the Origins of the Modern American Real Estate Loan Contract in the Building and Loan Industry," UNCG Economics Working Papers 12-6, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics.
    20. William Goetzmann & Frank Newman, 2010. "Securitizations in the 1920's," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2668, Yale School of Management.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N00 - Economic History - - General - - - General

    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:cup:jechis:v:71:y:2011:i:02:p:307-337_00. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    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.