The following blog post by Mike Calhoun and Sarah Wolff originally appeared on the Urban Institute’s Housing Policy Center: http://urbn.is/29rYamw
Any housing finance system’s ability to provide broad access and affordability is predicated on two factors: how prices are set and, equally importantly, how costs are distributed. Price is important to focus on for many reasons; chief among them is because price is a barrier to accessing mortgage credit. One way to see this operating is to look at the difference between what kinds of loans the government-sponsored enterprises say they will purchase based on their guidelines and the loans they actually purchased.
View the original blog post or download a copy with the link above.