In this chapter, I discuss innovation and entrepreneurship in residential real estate and construction (housing). Based on R&D spending and patent statistics, housing does not appear to be a very innovative sector. But in the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in the amount...

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...