We use new property-level data to estimate the price of land from 2000 to 2013 for nearly the universe of detached single-family homes in the Washington, DC metro area and characterize the housing boom-bust cycle in land and house prices at a fine geography. The data show that land prices were...

In this paper, the authors exploit the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA's) surprise 50 basis point cut to its annual mortgage insurance premium in January 2015 to study the impact of federal housing policy and interest rates on housing demand for a population of households likely to be...

The Wealth Building Home Loan (WBHL) represents a class of shorter-maturity mortgages that provide a low-risk path to homeownership and wealth accumulation while maximizing buying power. WBHLs are easy-to-understand loans that combine standard mortgage features in a novel way. Importantly, they...

In this paper, we use a new property-level dataset to estimate the price of land since 2000 for nearly 600,000 detached single-family homes in the Washington, DC metro area. We employ these estimates to characterize the recent boom/bust cycle in land prices and house prices in the Washington...

Our data show that land prices were more volatile than house prices during the recent boom/bust cycle. In areas where land was inexpensive in 2000, the land share of property value jumped during the boom, and this rise in the landshare was a useful predictor of the subsequent crash in house...

Our data show that land prices were more volatile than house prices during the recent boom/bust cycle. In areas where land was inexpensive in 2000, the land share of property value jumped during the boom, and this rise in the land share was a useful predictor of the subsequent crash in house...