Purpose This paper links the literatures on the life-cycle hypothesis, homeownership, home equity and pensions. Empirically, the focus is on the EU and USA. The paper aims to explore the extent that seniors extract their home equity and discuss the financial instruments available for equity...

While homeownership rates currently stand at historically high levels for all segments of the U.S. population, large gaps are present comparing various groups of the population. As of the third quarter of 2006, the non-Hispanic white homeownership rate was 76 percent while black and Hispanic...

While the average change in house prices is related to changes in fundamentals or perhaps market-wide bubbles, not all houses in a market appreciate at the same rate. The primary focus of our study is to investigate the reasons for these variations in price changes among houses within a market....

Homeownership rates equal the number of households that own homes divided by the number of households in the population. Differences in the propensity to form a household, therefore, may contribute to changes in homeownership rates over time in addition to longstanding racial gaps in...

As of the fourth quarter of 2005, 76 percent of white non-Hispanic families owned homes, but only 50 percent of Hispanic families. We argue that low rates of homeownership in Hispanic communities create a self-reinforcing mechanism that contributes to this large disparity. In part, this occurs...

Liquidity in private asset markets is notoriously variable over time. Therefore, indices of changes in market value that are based on asset transaction prices will systematically reflect intertemporal differences in the ease of selling a property. We define and develop a concept of...

The clich¨¦ ¡°once a homeowner, always a homeowner¡± is not true. We study the causes of terminations of spells of first-time homeownership.Using a national panel data set, we find that the likelihood of a household terminating a spell of homeownership is predictable at the time of...

The rate of transition of young adults from living with parents or renting to homeownership affects the national homeownership rate. There are substantial racial and ethnic differences in the length of time that it takes for this transition to occur, contributing to the well-known racial gaps in...