Rural homeownership is promoted in the United States by mortgage insurance programs administered by the federal government. We analyze the choice between assistance offered by two such agencies: the Federal Housing Administration and the Rural Housing Service. We find applicants are sensitive to...

Empirical research on the causes of financial crises has grown in recent decades. Early work, such as that by Kaminsky and Reinhart, helped establish the link between asset prices and banking crises. While this initial research focused on equity prices, subsequent research expanded the analysis...

In this article, based on the past/current local housing finance initiatives, market conditions, national housing policy and lessons from global financial crisis, we examine whether market based housing finance system may provide efficient policy instrument to solve housing (finance) question of...

Prior to an increase in the guaranty cap offered to mortgage lenders through the VA Home Loan program, I document nearly complete bunching of loan amounts at this cap. When the cap rises, I show that borrowers were more positively selected: they were more likely to repay their loans despite...

We compare mortgage lenders’ credit decisions to algorithmic recommendations – on the same set of loan applications – from widely used Automated Underwriting Systems (AUS) to assess discrimination. In 2018-19, lenders were more likely to deny minority applicants than non-Hispanic white...

Recent years have seen a sharp rise in the number of negative equity homeowners - those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth. These homeowners are included in the official homeownership rate computed by the Census Bureau, but the savings they must amass to retain their...

We use data from credit reports and deed records to better understand the extent to which second liens contributed to the housing crisis by allowing buyers to purchase homes with small down-payments. At the top of the housing market, second liens were quite prevalent: As many as 45 percent of...

After rising for a decade, the U.S. homeownership rate peaked at 69 percent in the third quarter of 2006. Over the next two and a half years, as home prices fell in many parts of the country and the unemployment rate rose sharply, the homeownership rate declined by 1.7 percentage points. An...

During the recent housing recession and financial crisis, mortgage modification has been heavily promoted by government as a way to stabilize the housing and the national banking systems. Numerous programs, such as the Home Owners Preserving Equity (HOPE), Home Affordability Modification Program...

This article presents findings from the HMDA data through 2016. The number of mortgage originations in 2016 rose 13 percent from 2015. Black and Hispanic white borrowers increased their share of home-purchase loans for the third straight year. The share of mortgages originated by nondepository,...