In 2010, the U.S. estate tax expired and executors of wealthy decedents were not required to file estate tax returns. In the absence of the estate tax, beneficiaries received assets with carryover rather than stepped-up basis. Unrealized capital gains accounted for 44 percent of the fair market...

Since the 1990s, China's real estate market has experienced a dramatic and long-lasting boom across China. This boom has led to substantial concerns in both academic and policy circles that the rising housing prices might have developed into a gigantic housing bubble, which might eventually...

Analysis of data from the HMDA loan data base and LoanPerformance.com at the MSA level and at the loan level substantiates both supply and demand effects of past price trends in housing markets, particularly with respect to subprime mortgage applications and approvals. At the MSA level, past...

A fall in house prices due to a change in fundamental value redistributes wealth from those long housing (for whom the fundamental value of the house they own exceeds the present discounted value of their planned future consumption of housing services) to those short housing. In a representative...

We construct measures of the annual cost of single-family housing for 46 metropolitan areas in the United States over the last 25 years and compare them with local rents and incomes as a way of judging the level of housing prices. Conventional metrics like the growth rate of house prices, the...

Credit supply expansion fuels housing speculation, generating a boom and bust in house prices. U.S. zip codes more exposed to the 2003 acceleration of the private label mortgage securitization (PLS) market witnessed a sudden and large increase in mortgage originations and house prices from 2003...