Impact Of The Sub Prime Crisis

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was one of the most economically disastrous events in American history. The housing market took a significant downturn during this period. People were not cautious when it came to their money and loans. Larger loans were given out to people, even to those with bad credit and low incomes. These large loans caused many homes to go through foreclosure since people were unable to pay off their mortgage debts. These debts were created by banks increasing the interest rates on the loans significantly in a short period. In 2008, foreclosures were up by eighty-two percent. This increase is significant because the previous percentage of foreclosures was at fifty-one percent from 2007. Unemployment skyrocketed, and people

The bursting of the housing bubble, known more colloquially as the 2008 mortgage crisis, was preceded by a series of ill-fated circumstances that culminated in what has been considered to be the worst financial downfall since the Great Depression. After experiencing a near-unprecedented increase in housing prices from January 2002 until mid-2006, a phenomenon that was steadily fed by unregulated mortgage practices, the market steadily declined and the prior housing boom subsided as well. When housing prices dropped to about 25 percent below the peak level achieved in 2006 toward the close of 2008, liquidity and capital disappeared from the market.

In previous years homeownership is was what people in the United States showed pride in, up until recent years after the fall in the market economy. The current homeownership in the United States have declined significantly since the years have passed and is now the lowest it has been in decades. Even though the housing market has been improving over the years in the United States, and the increasing homeownership rate is a worthwhile policy goal for America, home ownership still continue to decline.

Post-housing/financial crisis of 2007-2009, the housing market seems to be showing signs of improvement after great downturn. With the downturn in housing prices, many homeowners did not have enough equity to avoid taking a loss on the sale of their homes so they are sitting with home loans based off of higher-than-current mortgages. However, in November the National Association of Home Builders’ sentiment index jumped to 20, which is the highest reading in over a year. Demand for mortgages has also seemed to pick up a bit according to the Fed’s 4th quarter loan survey. Construction remains at historically low levels but has increased as of late, and the number of

The epic boom ended in a catastrophic bust. On Black Monday, October 28, 1929, the Dow (stock market index) declined by nearly 13 percent. On the following day, Black Tuesday, the market dropped nearly 12 percent. By mid-November, the Dow had lost almost half of its value. The slide continued through the summer of 1932, when the Dow closed at 41.22, its lowest value of the twentieth century, 89 percent below its peak. The Dow did not return to its pre-crash heights until November 1954. In the end, the stock market lost $30 billion in market value which would be equivalent to about $396 billion today. That is more than the total cost of World War I. The crash was the worst in U.S. history. It destroyed not only the confidence in Wall Street markets but it also undeniably led to the Great

911 startled America in 2001, the Dow Jones rapidly declined from 11,500 to 8000 and NASDAQ from 5000 to 3,800. In 2002/03 the dot com bubble hit dragging the Dow to about 5000 and the Nasdaq to about 2,500.

In 2009 the debt was amounted to about $12 trillion , or 83.4 percent of the country’s GDP (“Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2011” table 7.1). Since 2003, the debt has been increasing by more than $500 billion annually. The increase in 2009 was $1.9 trillion. According to the Congressional Budgeting Office, this debt will keep increasing at least for the next decade (“The Budget and Economic Outlook : Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020” 21).

The housing market is not the only part of the economy that has suffered. Many states had already been suffering from the recession, revenue is even lower because of fewer purchases of houses. The labor market and industry have been suppressed as well.

On Thursday, Oct 24, 1929, the bottom began to fall out. Prices dropped precipitously…By the end of the day the market had lost four billion dollars…By the end of the year the stock values had dropped by fifteen billion dollars.

By the time of the stock market crash, the top 1 percent of Americans owned

The demand for houses, along with a belief that home values would continually soar, fueled the building boom that would eventually result in our demise. Once the grace period on mortgage loans ended, and house prices began to decline, many people found themselves unable to escape the high monthly payments and began to default. Increasing foreclosures continued to lower the prices of homes, by 2008 it was estimated that 23% of all homes were worth less than their mortgages. 2.9 million vacant homes later, it is safe to say the consequences of short-sighted expenditures were severe. Since then, more than 6 million Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure. Much of the blame for the housing crisis can be traced back to rumor in the stock market. While homes are not typically viewed as investments under speculation, statistics show that this was not the case during the mortgage crisis. 22% of homes purchased in 2006 were for investment purposes.

Two major effects included the collapse of the housing market and an increasing unemployment. Shortly after the credit swaps and CDO's gave up, the housing market immediately crashed due to many foreclosures and loss of property value. Foreclosures of homes soared to 81% in 2008 and were up 225% compared to 2006 (CNNMoney, Cable News Network). A total of 861,664 families lost their homes due to foreclosure in 2008. The numbers were so astronomically high that one out of every 54 households received an eviction notice (CNNMoney, Cable News Network). Foreclosures and home values have a direct correlation, so home and property values dropped to an extreme low. Since many homes were beginning to foreclose, it drove the price of other homes down, resulting in the owner selling the home for much less than what they initially bought it for. This results in homeowners owning more than their homes are worth, consequently falling behind on their mortgage payments. Large metropolitan cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami saw house prices fall 30% and

The Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1.21% to 20,725.19, the S&P 500 had lost 1.16% to 2,372.8 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.75% to 6,061.77.

The housing market crash, which broke out in the United States in 2007, was caused by high risk subprime mortgages. The subprime mortgage crisis resulted in a sudden reduction in money and credit availability from banks and other lending institutions, which was referred to as a “credit crunch.” The “credit crunch” and its effect spread across the United States and further on to other countries across the world. The “credit crunch” caused a collapse in the housing markets, stock markets and major financial institutions across the globe.

Around 2006 the price of houses began to fall substantially fast. “The oversupply of houses and lack of buyers pushed the house prices down until they really plunged in the late 2006 and early 2007” (The Subprime Mortgage Crisis Explained). These actions threw investors into a big dilemma. In the beginning they believed buying the mortgages would bring them a profit, but quickly realized that the mortgages would cost them more financial damage than reselling the homes. “Nationwide, home vales have declined about 16% since the summer of 2006 and experts project that the drop will continue until homes have lost about 25% of their value” (Biroonak, 2008). In other words mortgage homes are “underwater”, that is, the mortgage owed equals or exceeds the value of the house (Biroonak, 2008). Investors and homeowners started to go more in debt trying to pay off their original debts.