Even though owning a house is a life goal for many, providing lenient access to mortgage credit is not necessarily desirable from a macroeconomic viewpoint as the build-up of unsustainable household debt is detrimental to macroeconomic and financial stability. To prevent evolutions in the residential real estate market from causing widespread financial instability, macroprudential policies have been developed in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-9. However, as these policies restrict the access to mortgage credit, they may have negative side effects on housing affordability and induce households to deplete their liquid assets when purchasing a house. This research project contributes to the literature on housing affordability and macroprudential policy in several ways. First, the relationship between housing affordability and macroeconomic stability is investigated through an examination of the link between the ability of a household to bear its housing costs and the response of household consumption to economic shocks. Next, I investigate the possible side effects of macroprudential policy by examining the impact of borrower based tools on housing affordability and households' leverage and liquidity position. In the latter analysis, possible interaction effects with fiscal policy are also taken into account. The different projects all utilize granular bank transaction data that allows to uncover new economic relationships.