The National Housing Act: A New Deal for Real Estate
The Great Depression was a dark time for REALTORS® and America. In early 1934 U.S. Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper painted a bleak picture in an address to the Philadelphia Real Estate Board.
Roper said 1933 "recorded the greatest amount of liquidation in the history of real estate over any previous 12 months' period." He added that low real estate values and declining sales had weakened the building and construction industries. Not least was the tragedy of the home owner, "believing almost to the point of religious ardor in the sacredness of home ownership, invested his life's savings...only to lose the home."
Better days were ahead. Roper proclaimed President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal "a New Deal for real estate." On June 28, 1934, the President signed the National Housing Act. Hugh Potter, President of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, hailed the Act as "the most important mortgage legislation ever adopted by Congress" and "the most fundamental legislation it has ever enacted affecting real estate and home ownership."
Late that year Potter was no less optimistic. "The foreclosure panic has definitely been stopped" he wrote. "The emergency is passing."
