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

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  • 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
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    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. 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, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 27(72), pages 647-692.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    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," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1782-1813.

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    JEL classification:

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

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