József Hegedüs has published a paper in Housing Finance International comparing the housing finance crisis of 1989 and 2008 and its policy response. The causes and management of the two very different crises provide a wealth of information on the nature of the transition from a socialist housing system to a market-based housing system. The interesting difference is that in the first case the risk was borne by the state, which forced the borrowing population to share the gains from inflation, but did so with very modest support for the low-income population. In the second case, the risk was borne by the borrowers and the state essentially forced the banks to bear part of the losses of the families. However, the loan bailout was very unfair, as it favoured the top 20 per cent of income earners but did little to support the wider middle class. Both schemes included an element to help the most needy families, but this only reached a small proportion of those in need.
Read the paper here.