We use a housing search model and data on individual home listings to decompose fluctuations in home sales and price growth into supply or demand factors. Simulations of the estimated model show that housing demand drives short-run fluctuations in home sales and prices, while variation in supply...

This paper provides novel evidence that increased student loan debts, caused by rising tuitions, increase borrowers' demand for additional consumer debt, while simultaneously restricting their ability to access it. The net effect of student loan debt on consumer borrowing varies by market,...

We assess racial discrimination in mortgage approvals using new data on mortgage applications. Minority applicants tend to have significantly lower credit scores, higher leverage, and are less likely than white applicants to receive algorithmic approval from race-blind government automated...

We study the effect of interest rates on the housing market by taking advantage of a sudden and unexpected price change in a large government mortgage program. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insures most mortgages to lower-downpayment, lower credit score borrowers, including a majority...

We estimate the effect of student loan debt on subsequent homeownership in a uniquely constructed administrative dataset for a nationally representative cohort. We instrument for the amount of individual student debt using changes to the in-state tuition rate at public 4-year colleges in the...

Does monetary policy influence who becomes a home owner? Home purchases by low- and moderate-income households may be particularly sensitive to mortgage interest rates, as these households’ budgets are tighter and they more frequently come up against binding payment-to-income ratio constraints...

We construct a new "list-price index" that accurately reveals trends in house prices several months before existing sales price indices like Case-Shiller. Our index is based on the repeat-sales approach but for recent months uses listings data, which are available essentially in real time,...

This paper presents new empirical evidence that internal movement--selling one home and buying another--by existing homeowners within a metropolitan housing market is especially volatile and the main driver of fluctuations in transaction volume over the housing market cycle. We develop a dynamic...

Using a novel dataset which merges real estate listings with real estate transactions in San Francisco from 2007-2009, we present new evidence that foreclosures causally depress nearby home prices. We show that this decrease occurs only after the foreclosed home is listed for sale, which...

Using new data on real estate listings, we provide new evidence that foreclosures have a causal effect on nearby house prices and disentangle the effect into two sources: competition and disamenities. We identify the causal effect by showing that sellers respond to new REO listings in the exact...