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Discussion Paper
Can Student Loan Debt Explain Low Homeownership Rates for Young Adults?
This first article explores the impact that rising student loan debt levels may have on homeownership rates among young adults.
Discussion Paper
Housing Market Tightness During COVID-19: Increased Demand or Reduced Supply?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the housing market has tightened considerably. The tighter housing market could reflect increased demand (higher inflow of buyers to the market), reduced supply (lower inflow of sellers to the market), or some combination of the two.
Working Paper
Monetary Policy and Home Buying Inequality
Does monetary policy influence who becomes a home owner? Home purchases by low- and moderate-income households may be particularly sensitive to mortgage interest rates, as these households’ budgets are tighter and they more frequently come up against binding payment-to-income ratio constraints in credit decisions. Exploiting the timing of high-frequency observations of mortgage applicants locking in their interest rates around monetary policy shocks, I find that a 1 percentage point policy-induced increase in mortgage rates lowers the presence of low-income households in the population of ...
Discussion Paper
Are Rising Home Values Restraining Homebuying for Lower-Income Families?
Since bottoming out in 2012, house prices in the U.S. have recovered rapidly. According to Zillow, the median home value has been growing about 6 percent per year. While incomes have also been recovering, they have not quite kept pace with home prices. This note uses data reported under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), along with income data from the ACS, and house price data from Zillow, to explore whether families in such areas, particularly lower-income families, are being priced out of homeownership as a result.
Working Paper
Student Loans and Homeownership
We estimate the effect of student loan debt on subsequent homeownership in a uniquely constructed administrative dataset for a nationally representative cohort. We instrument for the amount of individual student debt using changes to the in-state tuition rate at public 4-year colleges in the student's home state. A $1,000 increase in student loan debt lowers the homeownership rate by about 1.5 percentage points for public 4-year college-goers during their mid 20s, equivalent to an average delay of 2.5 months in attaining homeownership. Validity tests suggest that the results are not ...
Journal Article
Residential Mortgage Lending in 2016: Evidence from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data
This article provides an overview of the 2016 data reported under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 and analyzes mortgage market activity over time as well as lending patterns across different demographic groups and lender types. The number of home-purchase originations was about 10 percent higher in 2016 than in 2015, and the number of refinance loans was 16 percent higher. The increase in lending was broad based across demographic and income categories.
Discussion Paper
Assessing the Community Reinvestment Act's Role in the Financial Crisis
An important question arising out of the financial crisis is whether the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) played a significant role in the subprime mortgage boom and bust by pushing banks to make loans to risky borrowers.
Discussion Paper
Credit Availability and the Decline in Mortgage Lending to Minorities after the Housing Boom
This note sheds light on the factors contributing to the disproportionate decline in lending to minorities since 2006.
Working Paper
How Much Does Racial Bias Affect Mortgage Lending? Evidence from Human and Algorithmic Credit Decisions
We assess racial discrimination in mortgage approvals using new data on mortgage applications. Minority applicants tend to have significantly lower credit scores, higher leverage, and are less likely than white applicants to receive algorithmic approval from race-blind government automated underwriting systems (AUS). Observable applicant- risk factors explain most of the racial disparities in lender denials. Further, we exploit the AUS data to show there are risk factors we do not directly observe, and our analysis indicates that these factors explain at least some of the residual 1-2 ...