In 2013 buy-to-rent investors — referred to as buy-to-let (BTL) in the United Kingdom — accounted for 13% of all UK mortgage-funded housing transactions and for an even greater fraction of non-mortgage sales. This paper studies the behaviour of BTL investors using 2009-14 micro data....

Real house prices in the UK have almost quadrupled over the past 40 years, substantially outpacing real income growth. Meanwhile, rental yields have been trending downwards — particularly since the mid-90s. This paper reconciles these observations by analysing the contributions of the drivers...

Academics have proposed hybrid products with equity features for the financing of housing. In spite of their risk-sharing benefits these products have not become mainstream. This paper studies an important exception, a UK government scheme which in the five years since its inception has provided...

Recent developments in US house prices mirror those of the 1996–2006 boom, but the recovery in construction activity has been weak. Using data for 254 US metropolitan areas, we show that housing supply elasticities have fallen markedly in recent years. Consistent with this, we find that...

This paper studies housing and credit market implications of increasing income inequality and discusses how a low interest rate environment can alter its consequences. I develop an analytical general equilibrium model with a novel borrower risk composition channel of income inequality. Following...

This study investigates the effects of housing futures trading on housing demand, house price volatility and housing bubbles in a theoretical framework. The baseline model is an application of the De Long, Shleifer, Summers and Waldmann (1990) model of noise traders to the housing market, when...

Household debt and house prices in the United Kingdom rose substantially between 1987 and 2006. In this paper we use a calibrated overlapping generations model of the household sector to examine the extent to which changes in demographics, lower inflation, and a lower long-run real interest rate...

Using data on the universe of housing transactions in England and Wales over a 20-year period, we document a robust pattern of history dependence in housing markets. Sale prices and selling propensities are affected by house prices prevailing in the period in which properties were previously...

This paper uses detailed firm-level data to show that monetary policy affects employment through housing collateral and corporate debt. Our research design exploits the fact that many small and medium-sized enterprises use their directors' homes as a key source of collateral for corporate loans,...

The global financial crisis prompted the rapid development of macro-prudential frameworks and an increased reliance on borrower-based policy tools, which influence the demand for credit. This paper studies the optimal design of one such tool, a loan-to-value (LTV) limit, and its implications for...