Borrowers' housing equity is an important component of their wealth and a critical determinant of their vulnerability to shocks. In this paper, we create a unique data set that allows us to provide a comprehensive look at the ratio of housing debt to housing values - what we refer to as...

Using a monthly panel dataset of individuals' debt composition including mortgage and nonmortgage consumer credit, we show that house price changes can explain a significant fraction of personal debt composition dynamics. We exploit the variation in local house price growth as shocks to...