The Real Estate Bubble Crisis

The mortgage crisis of 2007 marked catastrophe for millions of homeowners who suffered from foreclosure and short sales. Most of the problems involving the foreclosing of families’ homes could boil down to risky borrowing and lending. Lenders were pushed to ensure families would be eligible for a loan, when in previous years the same families would have been deemed too high-risk to obtain any kind of loan. With the increase in high-risk families obtaining loans, there was a huge increase in home buyers and subsequently a rapid increase in home prices. As a result, prices peaked and then began falling just as fast as they rose. Soon after families began to default on their mortgages forcing them either into foreclosure or short sales. Who was to blame for the risky lending and borrowing that caused the mortgage meltdown? Many might blame the company Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but in reality the entire system of buying and selling and free market failed home owners and the housing economy.

All day and all night, they battled the emergency with each instrument available to them to keep the United States and world economies above water. Working with two U.S. presidents, and under flame from a crabby Congress and an open angered by conduct on Wall Street, the Fed—nearby associates in the Treasury Department—effectively settled a wavering monetary framework. With inventiveness and definitiveness, they kept a financial fall of incomprehensible scale and went ahead to create the strange projects that would resuscitate the U.S. economy and turn into the model for different nations. Rich with detail of the basic leadership prepare in Washington and permanent representations of the real players, The Courage to Act relates and clarifies the most exceedingly bad budgetary emergency and monetary droop in America since the Great Depression, giving an insider 's record of the approach reaction (http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardsalsman/2012/03/06/five-financial-reforms-that-would-prevent-crises-and-promote-prosperity/#).

In the lead up to the current recession, when the real estate market began to fall, there were so many investors shorting stocks and securitized mortgage packages that were already falling, that the market simply fell further. There were no buyers at the bottom, and the professional investors made millions off of the losses of others. Beyond this, there was no real federal regulation for securitized mortgages, since there was no real way to gauge the mathematical risk of any given package. This allowed the investors to take advantage of the system and to short loans on real people’s homes. Once these securities were worthless, many of the homebuyer’s defaulted on their mortgages and were left penniless. No matter from which angle this crisis is looked at, the blame rests squarely with the managers who began the entire cycle, the ones who pursued the securitization of mortgages. Their incompetence not only led to the losses of Americans who have never invested in the stock market, but to losses for their shareholders.

The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was a set of events that led to the 2008 financial crisis, characterized by a rise in subprime mortgage defaults and foreclosures. This paper seeks to explain the causes of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and how this has led to a generalized credit crisis in other financial sectors that ultimately affects the real economy. In recent decades, financial industry has developed quickly and various financial innovation techniques have been abused widely, which is the main cause of this international financial crisis. In addition, deregulation, loose monetary policies of the Federal Reserve, shadow banking system also play

During the early 2000 's, the United States housing market experienced growth at an unprecedented rate, leading to historical highs in home ownership. This surge in home buying was the result of multiple illusory financial circumstances which reduced the apparent risk of both lending and receiving loans. However, in 2007, when the upward trend in home values could no longer continue and began to reverse itself, homeowners found themselves owing more than the value of their properties, a trend which lent itself to increased defaults and foreclosures, further reducing the value of homes in a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle. The 2008 crash of the near-$7-billion housing industry dragged down the entire U.S. economy, and by extension, the global economy, with it, therefore having a large part in triggering the global recession of 2008-2012.

Before the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, rules and policies passed in the United States had required the banking sector to allow more consumers to be able buy homes (Nielsen, 2008). Starting in the year 2004, the bursting of the housing bubble took place, when Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two of the largest and most well-known mortgage lenders in the United States, obtained a large quantity of mortgage assets, including some chancy mortgages. They charged substantial fees and accepted lofty margins from these subprime mortgages. The mortgages were used as safety or security for getting private label mortgage-based

All the economy’s parts seem to be working together for a change: joblessness is under 5% - a 24 year low – yet inflation is holding steady at 3%, a combination that economists thought impossible” (Pooley). This article placed the economy in very favorable position, but the economy collapsed back in 2008 when Wall Street folded. In a video published by Johnathan Jarvis titled “The Cause and Effects of the 2008 Financial Crisis,” the video explains how the economy went from being healthy and vibrant, to desperate and helpless because investors were creating mortgages with people who were not financially stable, and those mortgagors were more than likely struggling to pay their debts prior to attaining a sub-prime mortgage loan. When these sub-prime mortgages defaulted, the house was reposed by the mortgagee and put on the market to sell. When the house went up for sale because of the default, the

The Housing Disaster and subsequent Great Recession of 2007 were predicted by several well-known Economists, although it still caught a majority of the Country and World by surprise! I wasn’t prepared for this economic shock either, as I had just finished real estate school and passed my State and National licensing exams during the previous year. It was a tough start to a real estate business but proved valuable in the lessons I learned during those next several years.

6.3 TRILLION DOLLARS! This is how much the value of homes have fallen in the United States since its real estate peak back in July of 2006. After the price of houses peaked in 2006, they gradually started to decline until December 30th, 2008. This is when the Case-Shiller home price index which measured the value of homes, reported its largest price decrease in its entire history. From there we saw prices continue to decline until we hit all-time lows in 2012. The United States housing bubble burst will be talked about for years to come including many what caused it and how to prevent such occurrences in the future. Low interest rates, Housing bubble, subprime mortgages, as well as securitization all contributed to the housing market crash of 2008 and will all be explained in this paper. According to the general consensus, most people believe that the housing bubble was the main cause of the 2007-2009 economic recession in the United States of America.

On September 15th 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the United States’ largest investment banks, declared bankruptcy. This event occurred during the Great Recession, a time period where economic activities in the United States had significantly declined in the early 21st century. The Great Recession occurred for numerous reasons; however the primary reasons are due to the housing bubble as well as the subprime mortgage backed securities. What made matters worse during the recession was the day September 29, 2008 when congress could not come in agreement to pass a bailout plan that would have otherwise saved Lehman Brothers. The period of its collapse is an interesting part of United States’ finance industry’s history; this is primarily due to the frequency that which this sort of event can occur actually occur in real world economics. The United States’ housing bubble is an example that is applicable to the black swan theory. This theory is summarized as, “An event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would be extremely difficult to predict.” (“Black Swan Theory”). The severity of the housing bubble effect had rendered the Fed’s primary tool of open market operations to be ineffective. The Fed had to rely on other measures that are infrequently used; in this case was quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is the injection of reserves into circulation to promote economic activity as well as decrease the unemployment rate. This

The following essay will thoroughly examine the severe economic downturn of 2008, formerly known as the housing bubble collapse. We will mainly focus our discussion on the effects the financial crisis had on Canada and the U.S and examine why both countries were affected differently. Although the collapse of the housing bubble is the most identifiable cause, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint one specific defining moment or event triggering the global financial collapse. There are many factors involved, due to the complex nature of the financial systems across the world, and this paper will delve in the key contributing variables that led to this financial crises.

It has been 7 years since the housing bubble burst and the financial systems collapsed back in 2008. Since then, some will say that the housing market, as a majority, has healed and regained footing but is that entirely accurate? It has been an up and down rollercoaster since the collapse of 2008, however the housing market has only started to recover within the past 2 years. “Right now, I would say we are 64% back to normal and a lot of what is driving the housing market’s strength is existing home sales, but prices have also helped push the recovery” (Jed Kolko, Trulia). As stated in the first paper, the housing bubble burst because of the increase in interest rates that put homeownership out of reach for some buyers. This ultimately caused homes to become unaffordable, leading to defaults, foreclosures, and short sales. More so, on December 30, 2008, the home price index reported the largest dip in home prices ever recorded, losing 33% from its 2006 peak to 2012. This financial crisis, unanticipated by most, caused the United States to go into a recession and has been known to be most significant risk to our economy. It was the beginning of last decade, 2000, when real estate prices rose at an unprecedented rate, subsequently leading to the bursting of the housing bubble starting in 2006.

According to Wikipedia a housing bubble is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets. It is characterized by rapid increases in valuations of real property such as housing until they reach unsustainable levels and then decline. Four years into the housing bubble downturn, much of the country remains hopelessly confused about what happened, why it happened and who is to blame. In my research paper I will try and demonstrate what a housing bubble is, some of the reasons for the bubble, was it preventable, how it kept growing, how it burst and how it has affected our economy.

When researching past economic recoveries, the housing market is the one to drive the economy out of recession. That being said, this economic recession hasn’t had much of an impact until recently. America’s housing boom had a tremendous influence on the economy for its low prices and flow of new home construction.

From the real estate market crash in recent years I think there are three main points to be looked at and learn from: Panic, “Too big to fail”, and banks’ lending habits. The housing market crashed and caused a lot of damage in the economic state of the U.S.; there was wide spread panic and confusion on which direction the market would soon turn. Thankfully we have recovered and the boomerang buyers who found deals in the low pricing and took action were handsomely compensated for the risks they had taken. Without those individuals who began to hold true to faith that things would turn around we may not have been so quick to hit to bottom of the recession and begin to rebound.