On the micro level, the consumption drop is the sharpest for the households who are less able or willing to finance one-off high consumption with new debts after the crisis. On the macro level, however, the drop in consumption of households who
have negative home equity for a longer period had a much bigger impact on macro consumption, because their number sharply increased during the crisis. Our results suggest that precautionary savings motives among the highly indebted households contributed most to the consumption decline during the crisis.

 A 10% change in home values leads to a 0.7% change in household consumption for homeowners, but a negligible response for renters. Young and middle-aged homeowners have larger consumption sensitivities to house prices than old households. Delving into the underlying channels, a pure wealth effect can explain part of the consumption sensitivity to house prices. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that house prices affect consumption through the borrowing collateral (and precautionary saving) channel.