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Discussion Paper
Sheltering in Place? A Closer Look at Pandemic Rental Instability in Six Southeastern States
From a federal policy standpoint, the plan to stabilize renter households through the COVID-19 pandemic hinged on two actions: the implementation of a nationwide eviction moratorium and the disbursement of emergency rental assistance. This plan relied on four key expectations. First, a federal eviction moratorium was expected to prevent the displacement of renters during the pandemic. Second, it was anticipated that rental relief funds needed to quickly reach households in need to offset growing arrearages. Third, it was assumed that working members of renter households would resume their ...
Working Paper
The Impact of Missed Payments and Foreclosures on Credit Scores
This paper debunks the common perception that ?foreclosure will ruin your credit score.? Using individual-level data from a credit bureau matched with loan-level mortgage data, it is estimated that the very first missed mortgage payment leads to the biggest reduction in credit scores. The effects of subsequent loan impairments are increasingly muted. Post-delinquency foreclosures have only a minimal effect on credit scores. Moreover, credit scores improve substantially a year after borrowers experience 90-day delinquency or foreclosure. The data supports one possible explanation of this ...
Working Paper
A Quantitative Evaluation of the Housing Provident Fund Program in China
The Housing Provident Fund (HPF) is the largest public housing program in China. It was created in 1999 to enhance homeownership. This program involves a mandatory saving scheme based on labor income. Past deposits are refunded when the worker purchases a house or retires. Moreover, the program provides mortgages at subsidized rates to facilitate these home purchases. I calibrate a heterogeneous-agent life-cycle model to quantify the effects of these policies. My analysis shows that a housing program with these features is expected to raise the rate of homeownership by 8.7 percentage points ...
Working Paper
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Demand for Density: Evidence from the U.S. Housing Market
Cities are shaped by the strength of agglomeration and dispersion forces. We show that the COVID-19 pandemic has re-introduced disease transmission as a dispersion force in modern cities. We use detailed housing data to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the location demand for housing. We find that the pandemic has led to a reduced demand for housing in neighborhoods with high population density. The reduced demand for density is driven partially by the diminished need of living close to jobs that are telework-compatible and the declining value of access to consumption amenities. ...
Working Paper
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Demand for Density: Evidence from the U.S. Housing Market
Cities are shaped by the strength of agglomeration and dispersion forces. We show that the COVID-19 pandemic has re-introduced disease transmission as a dispersion force in modern cities. We use detailed housing data to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the location demand for housing. We find that the pandemic has led to a greater decline in the demand for housing in neighborhoods with high population density. We further show that the reduced demand for density is partially driven by the diminished need of living close to jobs that are telework-compatible and the declining value ...
Working Paper
Mortgage Choice in the Housing Boom: Impacts of House Price Appreciation and Borrower Type
The U.S. housing boom during the first part of the past decade was marked by rapid house price appreciation and greater access to mortgage credit for lower credit-rated borrowers. The subsequent collapse of the housing market and the high default rates on residential mortgages raise the issue of whether the pace of house price appreciation and the mix of borrowers may have affected the influence of fundamentals in housing and mortgage markets. This paper examines that issue in connection with one aspect of mortgage financing, the choice among fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages. This ...
Working Paper
Are Central Cities Poor and Non-White?
For much of the 20th century, America's central cities were viewed as synonymous with economic and social hardship, often used as proxy for low-income communities of color. Since the 1990s, however, many metropolitan areas have seen a resurgence of interest in central city neighborhoods. Theoretical models of income sorting lead to ambiguous predictions about where households of different income levels will live within metropolitan areas. In this paper, we explore intra-city spatial patterns of income and race for U.S. metropolitan areas, focusing particularly on the locations of low-income ...
Newsletter
Homeowners insurance and climate change
Over the past 25 years, the U.S. has experienced a sharp increase in climate-related disasters totaling billions of dollars in damages. For those whose homes are destroyed, the financial impact can be devastating. Fortunately, many have some of their losses covered by homeowners insurance. In 2017—a particularly costly year in terms of weather-related damages—insurers reported around $68 billion in losses from homeowners insurance claims. Still, with the number and intensity of climate-related disasters on the rise, it is important for us to understand the degree to which homes are ...
Working Paper
The Size of U.S. Metropolitan Areas
Metropolitan areas—unions of nearby built-up locations within which people travel on a day-to-day basis among places of residence, employment, and consumption—serve as a fundamental unit of economic analysis. But existing delineations of U.S. metro areas—including metropolitan Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs), Urbanized Areas, and Commuting Zones—stray far from this conception. We develop a flexible algorithm that uses commuting flows among U.S. census tracts in 2000 to match varied interpretations of our metropolitan conception. Under a baseline parameterization that balances ...
Journal Article
The Homeownership Experience of Minorities During the Great Recession
It has been argued that during the Great Recession, wealth losses were more concentrated for college-educated Black and Hispanic families than for White and Asian college-educated families and their non-college-educated Black and Hispanic peers. This article explores the extent to which the homeownership experience for families who purchased homes between 2004 and 2008 is a potentially important factor in explaining this finding. During the housing boom, the increase in homeownership for Blacks and Hispanics was very similar, but the second group had a smaller decline. Despite these ...