in a large government mortgage program. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insures most mortgages to lower …-downpayment, lower credit score borrowers, including a majority of first-time homebuyers. The FHA charges borrowers an annual mortgage …

We construct a new measure of mortgage credit availability that describes the maximum amount obtainable by a borrower … of given characteristics. We estimate this "loan frontier" using mortgage originations data from 2001 to 2014 and show … that it reflects a binding borrowing constraint. Our estimates reveal that the expansion of mortgage credit during the …

have higher mortgage delinquency and charge-off rates and significantly higher probabilities of failure during the last … stronger capital buffers. Our results suggest that there is scope for improved measures of mortgage loan risk that could be …