Search Results
Journal Article
Boosting the Supply of Rural Rental Housing
The housing market has emerged as one of the sectors of the economy where post-pandemic price pressures are most visible. The combination of a long-running slump in new construction following the Great Recession and the huge shocks to supply and demand stemming from the COVID-19 lockdowns have contributed to growing housing affordability challenges across the country. In the span of just two years, from June 2020 to June 2022, the S&P/ Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index increased by nearly 40 percent. The cost of the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has also increased at a fast ...
Discussion Paper
Rental Housing Affordability in the Southeast: Data from the Sixth District
Housing data are available for most large metropolitan regions in the Atlanta Fed's Southeast region. However, many midsized metropolitan, micropolitan, and nonmetro areas lack detailed data on rental housing affordability and housing supply needs by income level. These data are important for state and local governments, affordable housing developers, and housing advocates to inform housing policy. Therefore, the Atlanta Fed partnered with the Shimberg Center at the University of Florida to analyze census data using a methodology developed for Shimberg's periodic Rental Market Study for the ...
Report
Affordability and Availability of Rental Housing in the Third Federal Reserve District: 2012
Using the most recent data available, this suite of materials provides information on rental housing affordability conditions and trends in the Third Federal Reserve District from 2005 through 2010. This analysis not only explores the proportion of renters in the Third District with a housing cost burden but also investigates whether there are sufficient numbers of affordable rental units to meet the needs of low-income households. See "Affordability and Availability of Rental Housing in the Third Federal Reserve District: 2012" for the Cascade Focus PDF summarizing findings for the Third ...
Working Paper
Large-Scale Buy-to-Rent Investors in the Single-Family Housing Market: The Emergence of a New Asset Class?
In 2012, several large firms began purchasing single-family homes with the stated intention of creating large portfolios of rental property. We present the first systematic evidence on how this new investor activity differs from that of other investors in the housing market. Many aspects of buy-to-rent investor behavior are consistent with holding property for rent rather than reselling quickly. Additionally, the large size of these investors imparts a few important advantages. In the short run, this investment activity appears to have supported house prices in the areas where it is ...
Working Paper
Location, Location, Structure Type: Rent Divergence within Neighborhoods
Housing rents are a large share of household budgets and make a large contribution to overall inflation. Rent inflation rates for different types of housing units sometimes diverge, even in the same neighborhoods. We estimate during 2013 to 2016 apartment rents outpaced rents for detached housing in the United States by 0.76 percentage points annually after controlling for location effects. These rent dynamics imply a segmented housing market. They also suggest rent indexes need to be based on data structurally representative of their measurement objective. In particular, indexes based on ...
Journal Article
Rental Housing Affordability Impacts Educational and Employment Opportunities*
Though safe, stable housing is widely recognized as a basic human need, it is far from assured for many renters in the Third Federal Reserve District. Across Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the lowest-income renters faced severe shortages of affordable and available units (Figure 1) in 2014, leading to widespread housing cost burdens among households with the most limited means. In all three states, the share of lower-income renter households with unaffordable housing costs1 grew significantly from 2005 to 2014, ranging from over two-thirds in Pennsylvania to more than three-quarters ...
What Are the Long-run Trade-offs of Rent-Control Policies?
While rent-control policies can mean more affordable housing for some, research shows they can also lead to a decline in the supply and quality of rental housing.
Journal Article
Capital for Communities: Preserving Affordable Rental Housing Through a Nonprofit Real Estate Investment Trust
Housing affordability is essential for neighborhood revitalization and social and economic mobility alike, but affordable housing units continue to be limited as demand for them climbs. In cities throughout the country, including Philadelphia, market forces in gentrifying neighborhoods place the affordability of many housing units at risk. This article will explore the Housing Partnership Equity Trust (HPET), a nonprofit real estate investment trust (REIT) that utilizes private capital to acquire, preserve, and improve affordable rental housing units across the country
Journal Article
How Will Affordable Rental Housing Be Preserved?
Affordable rental housing for low- and moderate-income individuals and families is increasingly scarce. Housing finance agencies, nonprofits, and policymakers agree that existing affordable rental housing must be preserved despite formidable complex obstacles in achieving this goal. This article focuses on challenges in rental housing preservation and discusses the programs and perspectives of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA), the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (HMFA), and the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA).
Working Paper
Air Pollution and Rent Prices: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke Plumes
We leverage quasi-experimental wildfire smoke shocks to analyze the causal effect of air pollution (PM2.5) on rent prices, using satellite-based smoke plumes data and ambient air pollution data. Our results indicate that the rent of homes that are not directly affected by wildfires but exposed to wildfire plumes declines by about -2.4% per one standard deviation increase in PM2.5. The response of home prices is more than threefold highlighting a gap in the tolerance of poor air quality, which we find is driven by age-related differences between tenants and homeowners. We further show evidence ...