Households can borrow against equity through different channels, including home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), second liens, cash-out refinancing, and for senior homeowners, reverse mortgages. We use data from the New York Federal Reserve/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, the U.S. Department of...

The substantial costs of foreclosures to individuals and society motivated nearly $40 billion in government subsidies to homeowners during the Great Recession. Most of these subsidies were in the form of permanent loan modifications with mixed evidence of effectiveness. This paper estimates the...

This paper links the literatures on the life cycle hypothesis, homeownership, home equity, and pensions. Empirically, the focus is on the E.U. and U.S. It explores the extent that seniors extract their home equity and discusses the financial instruments available for equity extraction. We use...

Households borrow against home equity through different types of mortgages: closed end home equity loans or revolving lines of credit, cash-out refinancing, and—for senior homeowners—reverse mortgages. The objective of this study is to identify how borrowing constraints and the lending...

A great deal of public service motivation (PSM) research has focused on understanding different types of PSM to describe public sector employees, including Samaritans, communitarians, patriots, and humanitarians. This research investigates different types of PSM for private sector individuals...

This paper examines the usage of reverse mortgages among mortgage borrowers, as well as rejected applicants for new mortgage credit who are age 62+. We find that 17-27 percent of actual and rejected borrowers would have qualified for a HECM reverse mortgage, or nine to 14 times the size of the...

Reverse mortgages have been obtained by nearly one million senior households. In the future, the number of eligible households will grow substantially, about 80 percent are homeowners, and many of them have substantial equity in their home. We study state-level variations in rate of originations...

Using a unique dataset of more than 14,000 senior homeowners in the U.S., this study compares self-assessed home values to arm's length contemporaneous appraisals. In a sample of seniors who received counseling for a reverse mortgage, the absolute value of the assessment error averages 18.9...

Housing wealth is a largely untapped resource that can help older adults supplement their incomes and buffer financial shocks in retirement. The federally insured reverse mortgage offers adults age 62 and older access to home equity with no required monthly payment, and protection for homeowners...

While reverse mortgages are intended as a tool to enable financial security for older homeowners, in 2014, nearly 12 percent of reverse mortgage borrowers in the federally insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program were in default on their property taxes or homeowners insurance....