Online activity leaves digital traces of human behavior. In this paper we investigate if online interest can be used as a proxy of housing demand, a key yet so far mostly unobserved feature of housing markets. We analyze data from an Italian website of housing sales advertisements (ads). For...

We document the emergence of a disconnect between mortgage and Treasury interest rates in the summer of 2003. Following the end of the Federal Reserve's expansionary cycle in June 2003, mortgage rates failed to rise according to their historical relationship with Treasury yields, leading to...

We document the emergence of a disconnect between mortgage and Treasury interest rates in the summer of 2003. Following the end of the Federal Reserve expansionary cycle in June 2003, mortgage rates failed to rise according to their historical relationship with Treasury yields, leading to...

We introduce mortgages into a dynamic equilibrium, directed search model of the housing market. Mortgage rates play their natural role in our model by affecting the share of per-period income that a homeowner spends on mortgage payment rather than consumption. We estimate the model using...

Borrowers in states with non-recourse mortgage law face limited liability on their mortgage loans. We show that non-recourse law causes larger swings in housing prices by encouraging speculative investments when housing markets are in a boom cycle. We find that mortgage lending pricing does not...