Although agent effort is essential and a given in the residential brokerage market, it is difficult to observe and quantify. We estimate a simultaneous systems model using virtual tours as a proxy for observable agent effort. By studying a period during which a visible technological innovation...

The housing prices and the mortgage debt witnessed faster growth than GDP in the run-up of the Great Recession. I document a mortgage market puzzle during the boom period: (1) the mortgage risk measured by the ex post delinquency increased, but (2) the mortgage spread decreased. The default...

Previous research (Rutherford et al., 2005; Levitt and Syverson, 2005) identify and quantify agency problems in the brokerage of single-family houses. Real estate agents are found to receive a premium when sellling their own houses in comparison to similar client-owned houses. Given the homogeneity...