particular assets are taxed, for considering the role of differential tax rules and risk in determining household portfolio choices, and for addressing distributional questions. Unfortunately, current versions of these models give housing short shrift; owner housing is assumed to be riskless,...

Capital investment tax provisions have been changed numerous times in the last decade, with depreciation tax lives shortened in 1981 and lengthened ever since and capital gains taxation reduced in 1978 and 1981 and now increased. The first part of this paper analyzes these changes and attributes...

Earlier research has shown that lender income and wealth constraint ratios discourage homeownership. This empirical research has been based on home purchasers using an 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) fixed-rate conventional loan. Employing the same assumption, we find that the constraints lowered...

Real estate markets are periodically plagued by excess supply, rent concessions and few arms-length transactions. During such periods, valuation is problematic. The model presented here requires the forecasts of future vacancy rates, and equilibrium and actual rental rates. Vacancy rate...

Mankiw and Weil have estimated a demographically-driven real house price equation on annual data from the 1947-87 period and used it to forecast real house prices over the 1988-2007 period. The result is their infamous 47 percent real decline. Their equation really only fits data from the 1950s...

During the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government closely regulated the single-family housing finance system. The regulation manifested itself in a highly specialized system with four notable characteristics: portfolio restrictions against investments in corporate assets, tax inducements to invest...

Three major changes occurred during the 1980s in the market for home mortgage credit; the securitization of fixed-rate mortgages, the development of a national primary market for adjustable-rate mortgages, and the decimation of the saving and loan industry. These changes and their impacts on...

Early tax reform proposals listed economic growth as a major goal, and some even gave explicit estimates of the expected increase in the long run output path that would follow from enactment. The 1986 Tax Act does not mention growth, much less give estimates of the expected increase, for good...

This paper summarizes the impact of economic, social and demographic variables on household formations and home ownership in the 1960-85 period and uses this knowledge to forecast household formations, and their split between owners and renters, through the year 2000. High and low growth...

Two phenomena characterized the housing market in the 1970s: a somewhat-disguised surge toward home ownership and a well-publicized sharp increase in the real price of housing. These movements were partially reversed in the first half of the 1980s. In the "standard view", the 1970s changes are...