Rental brokers as the matchmakers between tenants and landlords contribute 80% of the rental listings in certain markets, but how they smooth the search friction and transmit policy impacts is not well understood. This paper is the first to use a listing-agent matched data set from an online...

In this paper we identify the relationship of the pricing of residential mortgage lending products to their market share during the run up to the financial crisis of 2007. We then use this relationship to decompose the total impact of nontraditional mortgage products on house price declines...

There is little consensus as to the cause of the housing bubble that precipitated the financial crisis of 2008. Numerous explanations exist: misguided monetary policy; a global savings surplus; government policies encouraging affordable homeownership; irrational consumer expectations of rising...

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...

Asset bubbles come and go. Only the housing bubble, however, brought the economy to its knees. Why? What makes housing uniquely a cause of macroeconomic risk? This article examines the workings of the housing market as well as theories and empirical evidence about the housing bubble. It explains...