Discussion Paper
“Flip This House”: Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble
Abstract: The recent financial crisis—the worst in eighty years—had its origins in the enormous increase and subsequent collapse in housing prices during the 2000s. While the housing bubble has been the subject of intense public debate and research, no single answer has emerged to explain why prices rose so fast and fell so precipitously. In this post, we present new findings from our recent New York Fed study that uses unique data to suggest that real estate “investors”—borrowers who use financial leverage in the form of mortgage credit to purchase multiple residential properties—played a previously unrecognized, but very important, role. These investors likely helped push prices up during 2004-06; but when prices turned down in early 2006, they defaulted in large numbers and thereby contributed importantly to the intensity of the housing cycle’s downward leg.
Keywords: FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel; mortgage defaults; Real Estate Investors;
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Bibliographic Information
Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Part of Series: Liberty Street Economics
Publication Date: 2011-12-05
Number: 20111205