The United States housing bubble was an economic bubble affecting many parts of the United States housing market in over half of American states. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and reached new lows in 2012. [ 2 ] On December 30, 2008, the Case-Shiller home price index reported its largest price drop in its history. [ 3 ] The credit crisis resulting from the bursting of the housing bubble is—according to general consensus—the primary cause of the 2007–2009 recession in the United States. [ 4 ]

Increased foreclosure rates in 2006–2007 among U.S. homeowners led to a crisis in August 2008 for the subprime. Alt-A. collateralized debt obligation (CDO), mortgage. credit. hedge fund. and foreign bank markets. [ 5 ] In October 2007, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury called the bursting housing bubble the most significant risk to our economy. [ 6 ]

Any collapse of the U.S. housing bubble has a direct impact not only on home valuations, but the nation’s mortgage markets, home builders, real estate. home supply retail outlets, Wall Street hedge funds held by large institutional investors, and foreign banks. increasing the risk of a nationwide recession. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] Concerns about the impact of the collapsing housing and credit markets on the larger U.S. economy caused President George W. Bush and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke to announce a limited bailout of the U.S. housing market for homeowners who were unable to pay their mortgage debts. [ 11 ]

In 2008 alone, the United States government allocated over $900 billion to special loans and rescues related to the U.S. housing bubble, with over half going to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (both of which are government-sponsored enterprises ) as well as the Federal Housing Administration. [ 12 ] On December 24, 2009, the Treasury Department made an unprecedented announcement that it would be providing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unlimited financial support for the next three years despite acknowledging losses in excess of $400 billion so far. [ 13 ] The Treasury has been criticized for encroaching on spending powers that are enumerated for Congress alone by the United States Constitution. and for violating limits imposed by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. [ 14 ]

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§ Background [ edit ]

Land prices contributed much more to the price increases than did structures. This can be seen in the building cost index in Fig. 1. An estimate of land value for a house can be derived by subtracting the replacement value of the structure, adjusted for depreciation, from the home price. Using this methodology, Davis and Palumbo calculated land values for 46 U.S. metro areas, which can be found at the website for the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. [ 15 ]

Housing bubbles may occur in local or global real estate markets. In their late stages, they are typically characterized by rapid increases in the valuations of real property until unsustainable levels are reached relative to incomes, price-to-rent ratios. and other economic indicators of affordability. This may be followed by decreases in home prices that result in many owners finding themselves in a position of negative equity —a mortgage debt higher than the value of the property. The underlying causes of the housing bubble are complex. Factors include tax policy (exemption of housing from capital gains), historically low interest rates, lax lending standards, failure of regulators to intervene, and speculative fever. [ 5 ] [ 7 ] [ 16 ] [ 17 ] [ 18 ] [ 19 ] This bubble may be related to the stock market or dot-com bubble of the 1990s. [ 1 ] [ 20 ] [ 21 ] [ 22 ] [ 23 ] This bubble roughly coincides with the real estate bubbles of the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Spain, [ 24 ] Poland, Hungary and South Korea. [ 25 ] [ 26 ]

While bubbles may be identifiable in progress, bubbles can be definitively measured only in hindsight after a market correction, [ 27 ] which in the U.S. housing market began in 2005–2006. [ 28 ] [ 29 ] [ 30 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] [ 33 ] Former U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan said We had a bubble in housing, [ 34 ] [ 35 ] and also said in the wake of the subprime mortgage and credit crisis in 2007, I really didn’t get it until very late in 2005 and 2006. [ 36 ]

The mortgage and credit crisis was caused by the inability of a large number of home owners to pay their mortgages as their low introductory-rate mortgages reverted to regular interest rates. Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron concluded, We had a bubble, [ 37 ] and concurred with Yale economist Robert Shiller ‘s warning that home prices appear overvalued and that the correction could last years, with trillions of dollars of home value being lost. [ 37 ] Greenspan warned of large double digit declines in home values larger than most people expect. [ 35 ]

Problems for home owners with good credit surfaced in mid-2007, causing the United States’ largest mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial. to warn that a recovery in the housing sector was not expected to occur at least until 2009 because home prices were falling almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression . [ 8 ] The impact of booming home valuations on the U.S. economy since the 2001–2002 recession was an important factor in the recovery, because a large component of consumer spending was fueled by the related refinancing boom, which allowed people to both reduce their monthly mortgage payments with lower interest rates and withdraw equity from their homes as their value increased. [ 7 ]

§ Timeline [ edit ]

§ Identification [ edit ]