TY  - JOUR
AU  - Courtemanche,Charles
AU  - Snowden,Kenneth A.
TI  - Repairing a Mortgage Crisis: HOLC Lending and its Impact on Local Housing Markets
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16245
PY  - 2010
Y2  - July 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16245
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16245.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Charles J. Courtemanche
Georgia State University
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Department of Economics
P.O. Box 3992
Atlanta, GA 30302-3992
Tel: 404-413-0082
Fax: 404-413-0145
E-Mail: ccourtemanche@gsu.edu

Kenneth A. Snowden
Bryan School of Business and Economics
P.O. Box 26165
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402
Tel: 336/334-4870
Fax: 336/334-4089
E-Mail: snowden@uncg.edu
AB  - The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation purchased more than a million delinquent mortgages from private lenders between 1933 and 1936 and refinanced the 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 HOLC loans were targeted at local (county-level) housing markets that had experienced severe distress and that the intervention increased 1940 median home values and homeownership rates, but not new home building.
ER  -