We study a new type of securitization that deals with banks’ processing time, mortgage-receivable-backed securities (MRBSs) issued by real estate developers. Unlike traditional mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), the major risk of underlying assets of MRBSs is payment delay instead of default...

Previous studies found that through facilitating “bankruptcy remoteness,” asset-backed securitization can reduce firms’ borrowing costs and probabilities of facing credit constraints and increase their market values. However, little research has examined the real effect of securitization...

This paper studies the impact of foreign buyer taxes on house prices using recent law changes in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Counterfactual house prices are estimated for each treated location combining prediction techniques from machine learning with inference methods from the Synthetic...

Financially constrained borrowers have the incentive to influence the appraisal process in order to increase borrowing or reduce the interest rate. We document that the average valuation bias for residential refinance transactions is above 5%. The bias is larger for highly leveraged...

Recent theoretical models and empirical analyses argue that mortgage market activity creates information and lowers the costs of underwriting mortgages. We re-examine this question using models that control for neighborhood-lender fixed effects and address the potential endogeneity of market...

The fundamental connection between the spatial development of cities and financial markets is a topic that has received little attention from either urbanists or economists. In this short piece, I argue that part of the post-crisis recovery is predicated on a multi-faceted understanding of the...

This issue brief discusses a plan that would effectively deal with the mounting problem of home foreclosures in this country. The main point of the plan is that those who are facing foreclosure should have the option to remain in their home for a substantial period of time as renters. There are...

Though Congress and Presidents Bush and Obama put forth several different mortgage modification programs, the rate of foreclosures has continued to rise over the past several years. According to CoreLogic, about one-in-four (23%) mortgages were underwater in the second quarter of 2010, and...