It is widely recognized that options and futures markets for housing can reduce and manage the risks inherent in consumers' large investments in housing equity. The integrity of such markets depends, however, upon the use of transparent and replicable benchmarks for house prices and settlement...

Long term care is one of the few observable triggers for home sale among the elderly. Combined with a thin reverse mortgage market, this helps rationalize weak demand for Long Term Care Insurance (LTCI). Home equity typically tapped primarily in the event of long term care reduces the gain to...

This paper studies the portfolio choice and asset pricing in the presence of owner-occupied housing in a continuous time framework. Owner-occupied housing serves as an important consumption good as well as a dominant asset for most households. The theory part of this paper shows that the market...

It is widely recognized that options and futures markets for housing can reduce and manage the risks inherent in consumers' large investments in housing equity. The integrity of such markets depends, however, upon the use of transparent and replicable benchmarks for house prices and settlement...

Conventional wisdom assumes that homeownership is risky because house prices are volatile. But all households start life short housing services, and homeownership could be a less risky way of obtaining those services than the alternative, renting. While a renter faces year-toyear fluctuations in...

Are housing returns predictable? If so, do households take them into account when making their housing consumption and portfolio decisions? We document the existence of housing return predictability in the U.S. at the aggregate, census region, and state level. We study a portfolio choice model...

The tradeoff between risk and return in equity markets is well established. This paper examines the existence of the same tradeoff in the single-family housing market. For home buyers, who constitute about two-thirds of U.S. households, the choice about how much housing and which house to buy is...

We study a model of portfolio choice with housing in which house price is predictable. Housing is illiquid in that a transaction cost must be paid when the house is sold. We show that two state variables aff ect the agent's decisions: (i) the wealth-houseratio, and (ii) the time-varying mean...

Geographic diversification is fundamental to risk mitigation among investors and insurers of housing, mortgages, and mortgage-related derivatives. To characterize diversification potential, we provide estimates of integration, spatial correlation, and contagion among US metropolitan housing...