Postmortem for a Housing Crash

This chapter begins with a brief review of how America's housing market crash damaged received wisdom about housing markets and housing policy as well as the portfolios of households and financial institutions. This is followed by an overview of the subsequent chapters. It then discusses what actually happened to prices and construction during and after the housing boom; the causes of the boom and how changes in credit conditions play a dominant role in the search for causes; and the future of housing policy.