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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
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.
Working Paper
The Propagation of Demand Shocks Through Housing Markets
Housing demand stimulus produces a multiplier effect by freeing up owners attempting to sell their current home, allowing them to re-enter the market as buyers and triggering a chain of further transactions. Exploiting a shock to first-time home buyer demand caused by the 2015 surprise cut in Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance premiums, we find that homeowners buy their next home sooner when the probability of their current home selling increases. This effect is especially pronounced in cold housing markets, in which homes take a long time to sell. We build and calibrate a ...
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 ...
Discussion Paper
The Decline in Lending to Lower-Income Borrowers by the Biggest Banks
Data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) reveal that the largest banks have significantly reduced their share of mortgage lending to low- and moderate-income (LMI) households in recent years.
Working Paper
"Revitalize or Stabilize": Does Community Development Financing Work?
Banks in the United States originate $100 billion in community development loans every year and hold a similar amount of community development investments on their balance sheets. A number of federal place-based policies encourage the provision of these loans and investments to promote growth, employment and the availability of affordable housing to disadvantaged communities. Research into the effectiveness of privately supplied community development financing has been hampered, however, by the lack of comprehensive data on banks' community development activities at a local level. Hand ...
Journal Article
The 2014 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data
This article provides an overview of the 2014 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 4 percent higher in 2014 than in 2013, while the number of refinance loans was 55 percent lower. We document an increasing share of mortgage loans originated by independent, nondepository mortgage companies. In addition, we analyze the possible effects of recent changes to rules regulating the mortgage market.