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Journal Article
Taxes, income distribution, and the real estate cycle: why all houses do not appreciate at the same rate
Changes in house prices are generally reported on an aggregate basis. This article suggests that within a metropolitan area, high-value and low-value homes appreciate at different rates. Overall, the authors results indicate that appreciation rates are more volatile for high-priced homes than for less expensive homes around the real estate cycle. ; The different rates of price appreciation are partly explained by changes in the user cost of owning a home. Cyclical factors also play a part. Furthermore, the author found that changes in the prices of lowervalue homes have a contemporaneous ...
Journal Article
Does location matter?
Journal Article
Regional housing supply and credit constraints
The construction of new housing plays a critical role in the economy, yet it is understudied by researchers. Increases in housing starts raise construction employment, and recent home buyers often purchase other consumer durables, leading through the multiplier effect to increased employment. Construction is especially important to the business cycle, because changes in residential construction tend to lead recessions and recovery.> Despite its importance, empirical research on housing supply is surprisingly rare. This article presents a new empirical model of housing supply that reflects the ...
Journal Article
The housing cycle in Eastern Massachusetts: variations among cities and towns
Numerous studies over the years have attempted to identify the impact of amenities on housing price levels within specific metropolitan areas. It is well know, for example, that local public goods, tax burdens, school quality, crime rates, and the like are capitalized into land values. This article divides the Eastern Massachusetts area into small groups of similar towns and examines the pattern of price changes across those groups during the boom, bust, and recovery periods. Since 1982, differences in appreciation rates across cities and towns have been particularly pronounces. The authors ...
Journal Article
A new look at reverse mortgages: potential market and institutional constraints
Most elderly hold a significant portion of their non-pension wealth in housing equity. Although they might prefer to use this housing equity to finance current consumption, to pay for an emergency, or to help out a relative in need, utilizing this wealth, would force the sale of their home. Traditional home equity lines of credit require that principal and interest be paid back over a fixed time interval, yet many elderly want to avoid mortgage payments because they live on a limited income. Reverse mortgages hold the promise of helping elderly homeowners out of this bind by allowing them to ...
Journal Article
Gifts for home purchase and housing market behavior
Rapid increases in house prices can make home ownership more difficult for prospective first-time home buyers by increasing the required down payment amount and, if the increases outpace income growth, by increasing the ratio of mortgage payments to income. In response to such constraints, households may seek a gift or loan from a family member to use as part of the down payment. ; Family transfers for housing purchase may be useful in understanding the relationship between housing finance and housing markets. Gifts may play a critical role for some households in home purchase activity in ...
Journal Article
School quality and Massachusetts enrollment shifts in the context of tax limitations
Like most states, Massachusetts underwent a large shift in public school enrollment between the 1980s and 1990s, requiring a number of sizable fiscal and educational adjustments by individual school districts. Between 1980 and 1989, the number of students in kindergarten through grade 12 fell 21 percent, from 1.04 million to 825,000. As children of baby boomers reached school age, the picture changed and enrollments grew more than 90,000 over the next seven years. These aggregate trends gloss over even more marked shifts at the local level. This ...
Journal Article
The key to unlocking old money
Journal Article
Chasing good schools in Massachusetts