The impact of borrowing constraints on homeownership has been well established in the literature. Wealth is most likely to restrict homeownership followed by credit and income. Using recent movers from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and borrowing constraint definitions commonly...

This paper identifies for the first time the impact of borrowing constraints in the recent decline in homeownership rates. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finance (SCF), we measure the combined impact of income, wealth and credit constraints on homeownership outcomes over time. It has...

Home appraisals are produced for millions of residential mortgage transactions each year, but appraised values are rarely below the purchase contract price. We argue that institutional features of home mortgage lending cause much of the information in appraisals to be lost: some 30 percent of...

This paper presents evidence on the impact of the housing bubble, flood of high risk mortgage lending, and subsequent meltdown in homeownership. We point to agency and information problems in the mortgage origination and securitization market; incomplete risk transfer; and underassessment of...