How much did single family home investors help cause the credit crisis? The New York Fed’s latest study shows that real estate “investors”—borrowers who use financial leverage in the form of mortgage credit to purchase multiple residential properties—played a previously unrecognized but very important role, saying:

“These investors likely helped push prices up during 2004-06; but when prices turned down in early 2006 they defaulted in large numbers and thereby contributed importantly to the intensity of the housing cycle’s downward leg.”

I’m just the messenger, here’s the Fed’s Flip This House report. It certainly shows why many servicers are wary of extending several loans to one borrower, in spite of proponents saying those borrowers are “professional investors and know what they’re doing.”