We construct a bilateral search model of the housing market in which agents differ in their flow rewards while searching. Buyers and sellers enter the market with high flow rewards, but move at a Poisson rate to a state with low flow rewards if they do not transact in the meantime. We...

In this paper, we study a household’s optimal life-cycle housing choices by calibrating a model with uninsurable labor income and house price risks. In our setup, the household not only decides between renting and owning a house, but also chooses the size of its house. Borrowing is...

This paper compares wealth portfolios across countries. The household sector in the US and Canada owns much more financial wealth, and much less housing wealth, than the household sector in most of Europe. We address this fact using a calibrated two sector growth model with endogenous financial...

In a model with housing collateral, the ratio of housing wealth to human wealth shifts the conditional distribution of consumption growth. In the model, a decrease in house prices reduces the collateral value of housing, increases household exposure to idiosyncratic risk, reduces the amount of...

This paper studies portfolio choice and asset prices in a model with two consumption goods, one of which involves a commitment in that its consumption can only be adjusted at a cost. Commitments effectively make investors more risk averse: they invest less in risky assets and smooth total...

Since 1975, the aggregate value of residential land has averaged approximately 90% of GDP and has recently risen to 125% of GDP. In this paper, I use a calibrated general-equilibrium model with idisyncratic labor productivity draws to attempt to measure the extent to which current tax policies,...