This article presents findings from the HMDA data through 2016. The number of mortgage originations in 2016 rose 13 percent from 2015. Black and Hispanic white borrowers increased their share of home-purchase loans for the third straight year. The share of mortgages originated by nondepository,...

Prior to an increase in the guaranty cap offered to mortgage lenders through the VA Home Loan program, I document nearly complete bunching of loan amounts at this cap. When the cap rises, I show that borrowers were more positively selected: they were more likely to repay their loans despite...

The effects of households' indebtedness on their house-selling decisions are studied in a dynamic equilibrium model with search in the housing market and defaultable long-term mortgages. In equilibrium, both sellers' asking prices and time-to-sell increase with the relative size of their...

Borrowers' housing equity is an important component of their wealth and a critical determinant of their vulnerability to shocks. In this paper, we create a unique data set that allows us to provide a comprehensive look at the ratio of housing debt to housing values - what we refer to as...

Since Feb. 13, 2010, detailed information on every home mortgage default and foreclosure in New York State must be filed with the New York State Dept. of Financial Services (DFS). The data comes from pre-foreclosure filing (PFF) notices that mortgage servicers must send to both the borrower and...

Residential mortgage markets in the United States have been tumultuous in recent years. Much has been written about this period of dislocation, but little empirical work has assessed specifically its impact on low-income and minority communities, or African-American and Hispanic borrowers...

This paper analyses how borrower liquidity constraints and home equity relate to the realized loss given default (LGD) using the quarterly U.S. residential mortgage loan-level data observed from Q2 2005 to Q1 2015. We define defaulted loans with zero-LGD as cure loans and those with non-zero LGD...

From 2007 to 2009 U.S. house prices plunged and mortgage defaults surged. While ostensibly consistent with widespread “ruthless default,” analysis of detailed mortgage and house price data indicates that borrowers do not walk away until they are deeply underwater – far deeper than...

This paper analyses how borrower liquidity constraints and home equity relate to the realized loss given default (LGD) using the quarterly U.S. residential mortgage loan-level data observed from Q2 2005 to Q1 2015. We define defaulted loans with zero-LGD as cure loans and those with non-zero LGD...

Home appraisals are produced for millions of residential mortgage transactions each year, but appraised values are rarely below the purchase contract price: Some 30% of appraisals in our sample are exactly at the home price (with less than 10% of them below it). We lay out a basic theoretical...