In the thirteen years since the onset of 2007-2008 financial crisis, economists and researchers have thoroughly investigated the financial crisis. We conduct a selective review of the extant literature on the financial crisis, with special emphasis on the US mortgage markets, as they were the...

U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee considered many important banking reforms in 2009-2010 including the Dodd-Frank Act. We show that during this period, the foreclosure starts on delinquent mortgages were delayed in the districts of committee members even though there was...

This paper shows, for the first time, how liquidity infusions from government bailouts affect loan modification in the mortgage market. The design of the Pooling and Service Agreement leads mortgage servicers to prefer foreclosure to modification when the servicers are liquidity constrained....

Institutions often offer a menu of contracts to consumers in an attempt to create a separating equilibrium that reveals borrower types and provides better pricing. We test the effectiveness of a specific set of contracts in the mortgage market: mortgage points. Points allow borrowers to exchange...

This paper studies a largely overlooked and important segment of the mortgage market in explaining the recent financial crisis — the condominium loan market, which experienced a 15-fold increase in origination and constituted 15% of the overall residential loan originations from 2001 to 2007....

The servicer comments are proprietary and hardly accessible; however, they can offer the single best source for real-time information of the mortgages. We utilize these comments to shed light on borrower responses to the mortgage forbearance program contained in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and...

We evaluate the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) that provided intermediaries with sizeable financial incentives to renegotiate mortgages. HAMP increased intensity of renegotiations and prevented substantial number of foreclosures but reached just one-third of its...

Using loan-level mortgage data merged with consumer credit records, we examine the ability of the government to impact mortgage refinancing activity and spur consumption by focusing on the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). The policy relaxed housing equity constraints by extending...

This paper shows how liquidity infusions affect loan modification in the mortgage market. The design of pooling and servicing agreements leads mortgage servicers to prefer foreclosure over modification when they are liquidity constrained. Therefore, a positive liquidity shock is expected to...

Financially constrained borrowers have the incentive to influence the appraisal process in order to increase borrowing or reduce the interest rate. We document that the average valuation bias for residential refinance transactions is above 5%. The bias is larger for highly leveraged...