We study the effect of interest rates on the housing market by taking advantage of a sudden and unexpected price change in a large government mortgage program. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insures most mortgages to lower-downpayment, lower credit score borrowers, including a majority...

We construct a new "list-price index" that uses the repeat-sales approach to measure house prices but for recent months uses listings data instead of transactions data. Because listings data describe the current offering price and are available essentially in real time, our index is more timely...

Using listings data, we construct a new repeat-sales house price index that describes house values at the contract date when the price is determined rather than the closing date when the property is transferred. We show that this difference in timing helps explain several puzzles about house...