We study the evolution of US mortgage credit supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the mortgage market experienced a historic boom in 2020, we show there was also a large and sustained increase in intermediation markups that limited the pass-through of low rates to borrowers. Markups...

Like the United States, Denmark relies heavily on capital markets for funding residential mortgages, and the Danish covered bond market bears a number of similarities to U.S. agency securitization. In this paper we describe the key features of the Danish mortgage finance system and compare and...

Technology-based ("FinTech") lenders increased their market share of U.S. mortgage lending from 2% to 8% from 2010 to 2016. Using market-wide, loan-level data on U.S. mortgage applications and originations, we show that FinTech lenders process mortgage applications about 20% faster than other...

The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac credit risk transfer (CRT) programs, now in their fifth year, shift a portion of credit risk on more than $1.8 trillion of mortgages to private-sector investors. This study summarizes and evaluates the CRT programs, finding that they have been successful in...

Like the United States, Denmark relies heavily on capital markets for funding residential mortgages, and its covered bond market bears a number of similarities to U.S. agency securitization. This article describes the key features of the Danish mortgage finance system and compares and contrasts...

We study the evolution of US mortgage credit supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the mortgage market experienced a historic boom in 2020, we show there was also a large and sustained increase in intermediation markups that limited the pass-through of low rates to borrowers. Markups...

We describe a set of six design principles for the reorganization of the U.S. housing finance system and apply them to one model for replacing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that has so far received frequent mention but little sustained analysis – the lender cooperative utility. We discuss the...

We study credit ratings on subprime and Alt-A mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) deals issued between 2001 and 2007, the period leading up to the subprime crisis. The fraction of highly rated securities in each deal is decreasing in mortgage credit risk (measured either ex ante or ex post),...

Fixed-rate mortgages (FRMs) dominate the U.S. mortgage market, with important consequences for monetary policy, household risk management, and financial stability. In this paper, we show that the share of FRMs is sharply lower when mortgages are difficult to securitize. Our analysis exploits...

We summarize and evaluate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's credit risk transfer (CRT) programs, which have been used since 2013 to shift a portion of credit risk on more than $1.8 trillion of mortgages to private sector investors. We argue that the CRT programs have been successful in reducing the...