As climate disasters intensify, their financial shockwaves increasingly threaten residential stability and the resilience of the U.S. mortgage market. While prior research links natural disasters to payment delinquency, far less is known about foreclosure-the terminal outcome of housing...

We examine foreclosure discounts and their subsequent impact on investor returns in Berlin's housing market from 1984 to 2022. Utilizing hedonic regression models and matching techniques on a data set of housing transactions, we determine that foreclosure discounts, ranging from 20% to 50%, are...

Large platforms are often accused of refusing to serve (or discriminating against) competing sellers in adjacent product markets. Antitrust law labels such activity a unilateral “refusal to deal” (RTD) and evaluates it under a predation-like framework shaped by the two leading RTD cases,...

I study frictions that prevent banks and loan servicers from granting debt relief to struggling borrowers in the U.S. residential mortgage market. I explore how asymmetric information, transaction costs and aid generosity associated with granting debt relief affect mortgage foreclosure outcomes....

Did the United States government distort efficient returns of the housing finance sector in response to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic? This paper employs a Fama-French five-factor capital asset pricing model event study hybrid approach to investigate if the Coronavirus Aid, Relief,...

In this paper we ask whether foreclosures are contagious: does a completed foreclosure cause neighboring foreclosure filings? We estimate this relationship using administrative data on home foreclosures and sales in Cook County, IL, and instrument a completed foreclosure using random assignment...

Homeowners face risk due to variation in annual property tax liabilities which may result in financial distress and eventual mortgage foreclosure. We show that an unintended consequence of a common property tax feature, assessment limitations, exposes households to more systematic risk despite...

This paper studies how the sale of delinquent debt affects foreclosure and renegotiation. In order to disentangle the effect of loan sale from that of loan quality, I exploit an unanticipated suspension in loan buyouts for GNMA securitized mortgages experiencing a rolling delinquency. I find...

We conduct comprehensive analyses on whether and how the judicial foreclosure procedure helps subprime mortgage borrowers to reinstate their delinquent loans outside foreclosure liquidation. Even though the transition rates of various exit types are all higher in non-judicial states, we argue...

How costly is foreclosure? Estimates of the social cost of foreclosure typically focus on financial costs. Using random judge assignment instrumental variable (IV) and propensity score matching (PSM) approaches in Cook County, Illinois, we find evidence of significant non-pecuniary costs of...

We investigate the long-term effects of foreclosure-induced relocations on adolescents and their subsequent use of credit. We ask whether individuals who experience a foreclosure-induced move between the ages of 10 and 17 are more likely to exhibit signs of credit scarring later in life. To...

This paper investigates how technology affects mortgage foreclosure markets. Exploiting the staggered adoption of electronic bidding across adjoined Florida’s counties, I show that foreclosure auction success increases by 27%, and price discounts shrink by 42%. The effects are the largest in...

Foreclosures have large societal costs, and in many cases are more costly to mortgage- holders than the borrower resuming payments. In 2014, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) implemented regulations for mortgage servicers aimed at addressing servicer conduct that may have led...

There was an unprecedented wave of foreclosures and evictions in Spain after the 2008 global financial crisis. The subsequent Great Recession had strong economic, social and environmental consequences. This paper explores the frequency of permanent shocks in foreclosure quarterly rates (defined...

We build a business cycle model characterized by endogenous firms dynamics, where banks may prefer debt renegotiation, i.e. non-performing exposures, to outright borrowers default. We find that debt renegotiations only do not have adverse effects in the event of financial crisis episodes, but a...

Foreclosure is a prominent concept in the antitrust laws and across economics. In the world of exclusionary conduct—foreclosure is the concept. But, despite its prominence in antitrust law and economics—including taking center stage in the Department of Justice’s complaint against...

We study the competitive effects of a vertical merger in a digital industry where an integrated incumbent (closed ecosystem) competes with an open ecosystem formed by an upstream supplier (ecosystem gatekeeper) and two downstream retailers selling differentiated products. Absent innovation, the...

Communities across the nation continue to struggle with the long-term effects of the housing market crash and resulting foreclosure crisis of 2006-2007. In Cook County, which includes the city of Chicago and several surrounding suburbs, foreclosure and resulting vacant buildings continue to pose...

We follow a representative panel of millions of consumers in the U.S. from 2007 to 2017 and document several facts on the long-term effects of the Great Recession. There were about six million foreclosures in the ten-year period after Lehman’s collapse. Owners of multiple homes accounted for...

Millions of homeowners are having difficulty paying their mortgage because of the COVID-19 emergency, and those suffering from a sustained income loss will be unable to afford their original monthly payments. Research based on post-Great Recession defaults provide compelling evidence that a...

This paper studies the impact of foreclosures on house prices in Italy using a large dataset of listings. We estimate that the foreclosure discount is considerable, and this would suggest a high degree of market segmentation and limited spillovers from foreclosures to the market for...

How costly is foreclosure? Estimates of the social cost of foreclosure typically focus on financial costs. Using random judge assignment instrumental variable (IV) and propensity score matching (PSM) approaches in Cook County, Illinois, we find evidence of significant non-pecuniary costs of...

This article provides a new rationale for the "leverage theory" of bundling in vertical markets. We analyze a framework with a capacity-constrained retailer and uncover that buyer power explains the emergence of bundling practices by a multi-product manufacturer to foreclose a more efficient...

Does securitization distort the foreclosure decisions of non-performing mortgages? In a model of mortgage-backed securitization with an endogenous foreclosure policy, we find that the securitizing bank adopts a tougher foreclosure policy than the first-best, despite resulting in higher loan...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress introduced foreclosure moratorium. We show that this moratorium stabilizes the housing market, lowers the Loan-to-value ratio (LTV) of households, reduces their refinancing costs, and increases equity extraction. We estimate that the moratorium...

Housing is the single most important asset for the majority of American households and a pillar of the American economy. The current U.S. home mortgage foreclosure crisis has a staggering impact on homeowners, lenders, families, neighborhoods, municipalities, and states. Foreclosure mediation...

Over six million households experienced foreclosure during the financial crisis. Where did they move, how did they fare, and why? First, we create a new longitudinal dataset between 2006 and 2011 from households' date of foreclosure to their relocation. Despite significant heterogeneity in...

We exploit the introduction of a foreclosure moratorium and a debt-discharge process in Greece that mitigate the repossession risk of primary residence mortgages to separate strategic from non-strategic delinquencies. We find that 37\% of delinquencies in our sample are strategic and document...

We investigate the impact of Great Recession policies in California that substantially increased lender pecuniary and time costs of foreclosure. We estimate that the California Foreclosure Prevention Laws (CFPLs) prevented 250,000 California foreclosures (a 20% reduction) and created $300...

How does securitisation distort the foreclosure decision of non-performing mortgages? In a model in which informed securitisers raise liquidity by jointly designing the mortgage-backed security and the foreclosure policy, the authors find that securitisers optimally adopt an excessive...

We investigate the impact of Great Recession policies in California that substantially increased lender pecuniary and time costs of foreclosure. We estimate that the California Foreclosure Prevention Laws (CFPLs) prevented 250,000 California foreclosures (a 20% reduction) and created $300...