From a broad macro-financial structure perspective, overly easy credit conditions gave rise to house price booms and busts in several advanced economies (e.g., Ireland, Spain, and the U.S.), and, more specifically in the U.S., an underpricing of risk made possible by regulatory arbitrage and...

The boom and subsequent bust in housing construction and prices over the 2000s is widely regarded as a principal contributor to the Financial Panic of 2007 and the subsequent Great Recession. As of this writing, housing market activity remains at depressed levels as the economy slowly resolves...

In the current structure of the U.S. residential mortgage market, a fall in property values may make it very difficult for homeowners to refinance their mortgages to take advantage of falling interest rates. In this paper, we explain the institutional background for this effect and quantify its...

This paper identifies for the first time the impact of borrowing constraints in the recent decline in homeownership rates. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finance (SCF), we measure the combined impact of income, wealth and credit constraints on homeownership outcomes over time. It has...

Our study investigates the role of speculation in real estate cycles. We find that even a simple model of lagged supply response to price changes and speculation is sufficient to generate real estate cycles. Second, the volatility of prices – the biggest purported downside of “speculation”...