Search Results
Journal Article
New-Tenant Rent Passthrough and the Future of Rent Inflation
New-tenant rent inflation rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, subsequently falling. Concomitantly, consumer price index (CPI) tenant rent, which measures rent increases for both new and continuing renters, rose more gradually and, after falling somewhat, has remained elevated. To illustrate why CPI rent inflation has remained elevated, we combine a measure of new-tenant rents and annual renter mobility rates to create a simulated CPI tenant rent inflation measure. We use this simulation to define a “rent gap” that represents the difference between actual CPI tenant rent inflation ...
Working Paper
On Commercial Construction Activity's Long and Variable Lags
We use microdata on the phases of commercial construction projects to document three facts regarding time-to-plan lags: (1) plan times are long—about 1.5 years—and highly variable, (2) roughly 40 percent of projects are abandoned in planning, and (3) property price appreciation reduces the likelihood of abandonment. We construct a model with endogenous planning starts and abandonment that matches these facts. The model has the testable implication that supply is more elastic when there are more "shovel ready" projects available to advance to construction. We use local projections to ...
Working Paper
Cross-sectional patterns of mortgage debt during the housing boom: evidence and implications
The reallocation of mortgage debt to low-income or marginally qualified borrowers plays a central role in many explanations of the early 2000s housing boom. We show that such a reallocation never occurred, as the distribution of mortgage debt with respect to income changed little even as the aggregate stock of debt grew rapidly. Moreover, because mortgage debt varies positively with income in the cross section, equal percentage increases in debt among high- and low-income borrowers meant that wealthy borrowers accounted for most new debt in dollar terms. Previous research stressing the ...
Working Paper
Recourse as Shadow Equity: Evidence from Commercial Real Estate Loans
We study the role that recourse plays in the commercial real estate loan contracts of the largest U.S. banks. We find that recourse is valued by lenders and is treated as a substitute for conventional equity. At origination, recourse loans have rate spreads that are at least 20 basis points lower and loan-to-value ratios that are around 3 percentage points higher than non-recourse loans. Dynamically, recourse affects loan modification negotiations by providing additional bargaining power to the lender. Recourse loans were half as likely to receive accommodation during the COVID-19 pandemic, ...
Working Paper
Technological innovation in mortgage underwriting and the growth in credit, 1985–2015
The application of information technology to finance, or ?fintech,? is expected to revolutionize many aspects of borrowing and lending in the future, but technology has been reshaping consumer and mortgage lending for many years. During the 1990s, computerization allowed mortgage lenders to reduce loan-processing times and largely replace human-based assessments of credit risk with default predictions generated by sophisticated empirical models. Debt-to-income ratios at origination add little to the predictive power of these models, so the new automated underwriting systems allowed higher ...
Working Paper
Technological Innovation in Mortgage Underwriting and the Growth in Credit: 1985-2015
The application of information technology to finance, or ?fintech,? is expected to revolutionize many aspects of borrowing and lending in the future, but technology has been reshaping consumer and mortgage lending for many years. During the 1990s computerization allowed mortgage lenders to reduce loan-processing times and largely replace human-based assessment of credit risk with default predictions generated by sophisticated empirical models. Debt-to-income ratios at origination add little to the predictive power of these models, so the new automated underwriting systems allowed higher ...
Journal Article
Mortgage Borrowers’ Use of COVID-19 Forbearance Programs
The guarantee of mortgage forbearance provided in the CARES Act is an unprecedented provision of flexibility for government-insured mortgage borrowers and has been successful thus far at limiting delinquencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The terms of this forbearance are favorable to borrowers, and there is little required in terms of documentation of hardship, making requesting forbearance an attractive option even if borrowers are not facing hardship and do not need forbearance to remain current on a mortgage. Despite this, evidence indicates that so far CARES Act forbearance has largely ...