Economic theory predicts that home ownership should have a negative effect on risk-taking in financial portfolios. However, empirical work has not found a strong relationship between housing and portfolios. We identify two reasons for the divergence between the theory and data. First, it is...

Urban economists understand housing prices with a spatial equilibrium approach that assumes people must be indifferent across locations. Since the spatial no arbitrage condition is inherently imprecise, other economists have turned to different no arbitrage conditions, such as the prediction...

We show that the hedging benefit of owning a home reduces the variability of housing consumption after a move. When a current home owner's house price covaries positively with housing costs in a future city, changes in the future cost of housing are offset by commensurate changes in wealth...

Questionnaire surveys undertaken in 1988 and annually from 2003 through 2014 of recent homebuyers in each of four U.S. metropolitan areas shed light on their expectations and reasons for buying during the recent housing boom and subsequent collapse. They also provide insight into the reasons for...

The US home ownership rate rose by 10 percentage points between 1940 and 1945, about half the size of the net change over the 20th century, despite severe restrictions on construction during World War II. I present evidence that wartime rent control played an important role in this shift. The...

Conventional wisdom holds that one of the riskiest aspects of owning a house is the uncertainty surrounding its sale price, especially if one moves to another housing market. However, households who sell a house typically buy another house, whose purchase price is also uncertain. We show that...

Using individual-level data on homeowner debt and defaults from 1997 to 2008, we show that borrowing against the increase in home equity by existing homeowners is responsible for a significant fraction of both the sharp rise in U.S. household leverage from 2002 to 2006 and the increase in...

We analyze by far the most extensive data base yet employed in estimating capitalizationquot; of below-market interest rates into asset prices: nearly 300,000 sales of owner-occupied homes inquot; Sweden from 1981 to 1993 with 40,000 including government subsidized interest rates. Ourquot;...

We have described the relationship between family attributes and moving, and between moving and change in housing wealth. Moving is often associated with retirement and with precipitating shocks like the death of a spouse or by other changes in marital status. Median housing wealth increases as...