New Families.

At the end of World War II, soldiers returned home, took brides, and started families. These new families needed housing. With wartime controls lifted, consumer and mortgage lending rose. Using Veterans Administration (VA) and Federal Home Administration (FHA) loans, banks could insure their loans to qualified home buyers through the federal government: if the home buyer defaulted the government paid off the loan. Banks in the West, in particular, used huge savings pools accumulated by eastern insurance companies to fund new loans. By 1953 the number of Americans owning their own homes climbed to twenty-five million, up from eighteen million in 1948. Throughout the decade Congress provided greater opportunities for individuals to buy homes by lowering the down payments on FHA-insured loans and increasing the limit on purchases from other agencies or investment groups by the Federal National Mortgage Association on the...