Homeownership among U.S. families increased notably in recent years, from 63 percent in 1989 to 66.2 percent in 1998. This article examines this trend and the factors contributing to it. We find that (1) homeownership rose for all racial, ethnic, and income groups; (2) the differences in...

Disparities in mortgage lending patterns between minority and nonminority neighborhoods have refocused attention on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a statute designed to encourage lending by financial institutions to nearby lower income neighborhoods. Geographic disparities may derive from...

As the laws vary from state to state, so does their impact. In some states, the high-cost mortgage business appears to have shrunk. But in other states, the opposite has occurred.

Adjustable rate and hybrid loans have been a large and important component of subprime lending in the mortgage market. While maintaining the familiar 30-year term the typical adjustable rate loan in subprime is designed as a hybrid of fixed and adjustable characteristics. In its most prevalent...

Federal, state, and local predatory lending laws are designed to restrict and in some cases prohibit certain types of high-cost mortgage credit in the subprime market. Empirical evidence using the spatial variation in these laws shows that the aggregate flow of high-cost mortgage credit can...

This research extends the agglomeration literature to a country that has not been studied and a market sector that has received little attention. The majority of research that examines how density affects productivity has indirectly measured productivity through worker wages or property prices....

Mounting foreclosures and disclosures of abusive lending practices led many states to adopt new anti-predatory lending (APL) laws. Researchers have examined the impact of such laws on credit flows and the cost of credit. This research extends the literature by examining whether the market...

This paper is concerned with the market rental rate for space offered by commercial property and how that rental rate evolves over time. Rental rates reflect the value of the services provided by the property and can have a significant impact on the ability of its owners to make monthly debt...