This chapter considers the structure of mortgage finance in the U.S., and its role in shaping patterns of homeownership … the design features of mortgage contracts that distinguish them from other loans, and that have important implications for … issues presented in the rest of the chapter. We then explain how mortgage finance interacts with public policy, particularly …

Home appraisals are produced for millions of residential mortgage transactions each year, but appraised values are … institutional framework that governs mortgage lending lead to information loss in appraisals (that is, appraisals set equal to the … incidence of mortgage default at loan-to-value boundaries (notches) above which mortgage insurance rates increase. Appraisals …

of the Danish mortgage finance system and compare and contrast it to the U.S. system. We also note characteristics of the … Danish model that may be of interest as the United States considers further mortgage finance reform. In particular, the … borrowers the option to repurchase their mortgage at the market price, mitigating "lock-in" effects. Danish mortgage …

Technology-based ("FinTech") lenders increased their market share of U.S. mortgage lending from 2 percent to 8 percent … from 2010 to 2016. Using market-wide, loan-level data on U.S. mortgage applications and originations, we show that FinTech … lenders process mortgage applications about 20 percent faster than other lenders, even when controlling for detailed loan …