This paper examines the impacts of changes in the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insured loan limit in response to the Economic Stimulus Act (ESA) of 2008. We use difference-in-difference approaches to compare the number of transactions and average loan-to-value ratios for properties...

The boom in the subprime mortgage market yielded many loans with high LTV ratios. From a large proprietary database on subprime mortgages, we find that choice of mortgage rate type is not linear in loan sizes. A fixed rate mortgage contract is a popular choice when loan size, measured by LTV...

This paper presents summary statistics and a preliminary analysis of the success rate of loan modifications made in 2010 and January 2011 to residential mortgages securitized in private-label residential mortgage-backed securities. We find that these more recent private-label loan modifications...

This paper extends the literature on modeling unobserved heterogeneity among mortgage holders and investigates reasons for non-optimal exercising of mortgage termination options: prepayment and default. Using a large sample of diversified population of prime and Alt-A loans, the research shows...

This paper examines pricing of subprime first mortgages by brokers and lenders using data on loans in originated between the first quarter of 1998 to the first quarter of 2006 at seven large subprime mortgage lenders. The results provide little evidence that most consumers obtaining mortgages...