2015-048: Monetary Policy, Hot Housing Markets and Leverage

Christoph T. Ungerer. Expansionary monetary policy can increase household leverage by stimulating housing liquidity. Low mortgage rates encourage buyers to enter the housing market, raising the speed at which properties can be sold. Because lenders can resell seized foreclosure inventory at lower cost in such a hot housing market, ex-ante they are comfortable financing a larger fraction of the house purchase. Consistent with this mechanism, this study documents empirically that both the housing sales rate and loan-to-value ratios increase after expansionary monetary policy. Calibrating a New......(read more)

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