Search Results
Journal Article
The varying effects of predatory lending laws on high-cost mortgage applications
Federal, state, and local predatory lending laws are designed to restrict and in some cases prohibit certain types of high-cost mortgage credit in the subprime market. Empirical evidence using the spatial variation in these laws shows that the aggregate flow of high-cost mortgage credit can increase, decrease, or be unchanged after these laws are enacted. Although it may seem counterintuitive to find that a law that prohibits lending could be associated with more lending, it is hypothesized that a law may reduce the cost of sorting honest loans from dishonest loans and lessen borrowers' fears ...
Discussion Paper
Did easy credit lead to economic peril?: home equity borrowing and household behavior in the early 2000s
Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this paper examines how households' home equity extraction during 2001-to-2003 and 2003-to-2005 affected their spending and saving behavior. The results show that a one-dollar increase in equity extraction led to ninety-five or ninety-eight cents higher consumption expenditures. Nearly all of this spending increase was reversed in the subsequent period. A fair amount of these expenditures went toward home improvements and repairs. In addition, households used home equity to help finance their purchases of used cars. Equity extraction also ...
Journal Article
After the refinancing boom: will consumers scale back their spending?
Concerns are rising that the recent surge in home equity withdrawal has left consumers in a weakened financial position that will, over time, prompt a retrenchment in spending. However, a look at household assets and liabilities suggests that consumers have used the withdrawn funds to restructure their balance sheets and reduce their debt service burden. As a result, households may be in a better position to spend in the years ahead.
Working Paper
Credit cycle and adverse selection effects in consumer credit markets -- evidence from the HELOC market
The authors empirically study how the underlying riskiness of the pool of home equity line of credit originations is affected over the credit cycle. Drawing from the largest existing database of U.S. home equity lines of credit, they use county-level aggregates of these loans to estimate panel regressions on the characteristics of the borrowers and their loans, and competing risk hazard regressions on the outcomes of the loans. The authors show that when the expected unemployment risk of households increases, riskier households tend to borrow more. As a consequence, the pool of households ...
Working Paper
Reverse mortgage loans: a quantitative analysis
Reverse mortgage loans (RMLs) allow older homeowners to borrow against housing wealth without moving. In spite of growth in this market, only 2.1% of eligible homeowners had RMLs in 2011. In this paper, we analyze reverse mortgages in a life-cycle model of retirement, calibrated to age-asset profiles. The ex-ante welfare gain from RMLs is sizable at $1,000 per household; ex-post, low-income, low-wealth and poor-health households use them. Bequest motives, nursing-home moving risk, house price risk, and interest and insurance costs all contribute to the low take-up rate. The model predicts ...
Journal Article
States fight predatory lending in different ways
As the laws vary from state to state, so does their impact. In some states, the high-cost mortgage business appears to have shrunk. But in other states, the opposite has occurred.
Working Paper
The impact of local predatory lending laws on the flow of subprime credit
Local authorities in North Carolina, and subsequently in at least 23 other states, have enacted laws intending to reduce predatory and abusive lending. While there is substantial variation in the laws, they typically extend the coverage of the Federal Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA) by including home purchase and open end mortgage credit, by lowering annual percentage rate (APR) and fees and points triggers, and by prohibiting or restricting the use of balloon payments and prepayment penalties. Empirical results show that the typical local predatory lending law tends to ...
Working Paper
Predatory lending laws and the cost of credit
Journal Article
New guidelines promote sound credit risk management