Monetary Policy, Hot Housing Markets and Leverage

Christoph T. Ungerer

No 2015-48, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: 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 Keynesian macroeconomic model to fit the response of housing liquidity to monetary policy, the interaction between credit frictions and housing market search frictions generates endogenous movements in the loan-to-value ratio which amplify the economy's response to monetary policy.

Keywords: Credit frictions; housing markets; monetary policy; search frictions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E44 E52 R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2015-05-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-dge, nep-mac, nep-mon and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.048 http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.048 (application/pdf)

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