Financial Innovation (Collection)

4. Housing Finance in the Emerging Economies

The previous chapters focused mostly on the United States, Europe, and Canada. In this chapter, we turn to the emerging and newly industrializing countries. We start by comparing the depth of mortgage markets in a wide range of countries and then look at the characteristics of housing finance in emerging countries. Finally, we focus in detail on the housing market in China, as it has been totally transformed in the last 30 years or so.

Mortgage Markets in Different Countries

Figure 4.1 shows the depth of mortgage markets in different countries, grouped by region, in terms of the ratio of outstanding mortgages to gross domestic product (GDP), based on the average from 2001 to 2005.¹ On average, the ...