Housing policy formulation should be informed by a careful understanding of the behaviour of the housing market, as reflected by housing demand. Such basic information is important, not only for improved project design but also for the development of better sector-wide policies. Housing is a...

The prepayment risk of adjustable rate mortgages, unlike that of fixed rate mortgages, greatly depends on the decision of mortgagors to move. Given that housing also serves as an investment asset for the owner, it is hypothesised that the expected capital returns of housing are likely to affect...

The incidence of taking a mortgage loan from a commercial bank or cooperative for home purchase is sharply lower in developing than industrialized countries. Indeed, the common approach for achieving good quality housing is for a family to construct and improve a dwelling over a number of years....

We combine loan data from distinct sources to compare and contrast multifamily mortgage lending in Canada and the U.S. After a general comparison of the multifamily housing markets in the two countries, we focus on loan pricing and non-price contract terms in the two environments. We find longer...

We explore the effect of mortgage curtailment payments on subsequent default probabilities. Although curtailment is not popular in western countries, it is the dominant form of prepayment in Asia. Using more than 6 years of mortgage performance records from an Asian bank, we investigate the...

The metropolitan area of Chennai, India, presents an interesting case study on India’s transforming economy because it has a unique urban structure for an Indian city of its size. It has an extremely high population density at the city center that is becoming even more crowded. It is also...

Due to the relocation of manufacturing facilities from Hong Kong to Mainland China, it is widely believed that some vacant private factories have been used as offices in Hong Kong. Yet there is no direct and systematic evidence to support this speculation. In fact, according to MacGregor and...

The Chinese government has embarked upon an effort to reduce the number of tenants living in publicly owned housing. This is a significant challenge for any government, but may be especially so for a country where private homeownership is a new option. Out of concern that many of its citizens...

This paper offers an explanation for the existence of price control on new houses in Korea, which is deemed both inefficient and inequitable. This phenomenon cannot be explained by the conventional model of rent-seeking or the capture theory of regulation. Instead, it is attributable to the...

This study is structured around two objectives: surveying the 180 years’ evolution of the US mortgage intermediation system (MIS); and, extracting the lessons to be learned by emerging mortgage markets. To that end, I first discuss three pillars of a well-functioning MIS as a conceptual...