Data Analysis

The American Predatory Lending team analyzed data from a variety of sources to gain a better understanding of how the housing market evolved in select states in the decade leading up to the Global Financial Crisis.

US Housing Market

This section includes a broad overview of how the US economy and housing market performed in the lead up to the Global Financial Crisis. It also includes sentiment analysis of prominent economics and finance blogs before the crisis to see if popular economic pundits foresaw the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. You will also find word clouds of our oral history interviews that display how three sets of stakeholders – government policymakers, consumer advocates, and banking executives – spoke about aspects of the financial crisis, including their thoughts on what caused the crisis.

North Carolina

This section provides a deeper dive into North Carolina’s demographics and mortgage market pre-crisis by dividing the state into its main geographic and cultural regions.  It also includes a detailed analysis of the number and type of mortgage enforcement actions issued by the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks in the years immediately preceding the Global Financial Crisis.

Other States

This section provides a detailed look at how the housing market evolved in select states before the Global Financial Crisis. States were selected based on regulatory stringency, geographic diversity, and data quality. This section also includes detailed analysis of the number and type of mortgage enforcement actions in five states.

MEA Data Dashboard

This section provides an interactive data visualization tool that allows users to dive deeper into the number and type of mortgage enforcement actions in all the states we analyzed. Filtering capability is provided.

Methodology & Reflections

This section provides a detailed description of our process for obtaining, cleaning, and analyzing state mortgage enforcement actions and the challenges and limitations our team faced in utilizing this data. It also includes a reflection on the challenges in with working with state data and recommendations to states for improving their data collection practices.