Brian Chappatta, Columnist

Covid Housing Boom Is Even Bigger Than Imagined

The latest Fed data on household finances shows the extent to which record-low mortgage rates and surging home prices turbocharged the economic recovery.

February 17, 2021 at 5:25 PM UTC

By Brian Chappatta

Brian Chappatta is managing editor of Bloomberg News' leveraged finance and distressed debt teams. He was previously managing editor and team leader of its wealth group. Before that he was a Bloomberg Opinion markets and finance columnist and a bonds reporter for Bloomberg News.

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Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

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We’ve reached the point at which superlatives don’t do justice to what happened in the U.S. housing market over the past year.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Wednesday released its quarterly report on household debt and credit for the final three months of 2020, with its strategists and statisticians deciding to dig deeper into mortgage originations, the types of homebuyers during the Covid-19 pandemic and to what extent Americans are taking out cash against their home equity. While much of what they found confirms many of the narratives about the housing market, it’s the sheer magnitude of the move that’s breathtaking and puts into context where the economy stands almost one year after the coronavirus crisis began in the U.S.