Unintended Consequences of Housing Policy

While governments may have the best of intentions in putting in place housing finance policies to address the problems of market failures, there are numerous examples of housing policies that either have resulted in unintended consequences or could pose potential problems in the future. In this chapter, we consider the following policies: Fixed interest rates;Financial sector deregulation;Direct mortgage interest subsidy;Design of government-sponsored housing finance institutions; andForeign currency mortgages. For each identified policy, an example of problems encountered is drawn from the US experience and from a non-US country (see Table 11.1). The USA has a long history of interventionist housing policy that has evolved with the goal of promoting homeownership. Amongst the advanced economies, the IMF index of government participation in housing finance for the USA is higher than for any other country with the exception of Singapore.1 As such, the US experience provides an excellent source of examples for unintended consequences of housing policy.