This paper examines the effects of a mortgage interest rate subsidy on boom and bust in the housing market by exploiting the Housing Mortgage (HM) program implemented in Mongolia. Main results are (i) the recent housing boom occurred from 2012Q2 to 2014Q1, while the housing bust lasted four...

It is a well-established fact that many retirees do not utilize their accumulated housing equity to help smooth and increase consumption in retirement as is predicted by the Life-Cycle Hypothesis. In this paper, I explore how older Americans may retain their housing equity to help pay off...

Many retirees retain housing equity and do not utilize it to help finance spending on consumption. In this paper, I examine how older Americans (age 55+) may engage in precautionary savings where households would sell their house in the event they face an increase in out-of-pocket medical...

This article presents the results of a survey carried out in spring 2012 to determine the level of housing costs incurred by Austrian households. The housing cost survey shows that the share of housing costs borne by homeowners (loan repayment plus operating expenses and energy costs) accounts...

We study the exposure of mortgage borrowers in Switzerland to interest rate and house price risks and examine how the households’ choice of risky mortgages is related to individual interest rate expectations and risk-aversion. Our analysis is based on a unique data set of household mortgage...

Real estate holdings, i.e. housing wealth and estates in land account for the majority of assets owned by Austrian households. At the same time, the associated mortgage loans constitute the bulk of households’ liabilities. Therefore, detailed data on real estate holdings and real estate...

This paper measures the effects of real estate brokerage services provided to sellers, other than MLS listings, on the terms and timing of home sales. It is not obvious that sellers benefit from those services. On the one hand, brokers offer potentially useful knowledge and expertise. On the...

This study presents a first summary of the housing finance results of the OeNB’s Household Survey on Housing Wealth in Austria. 22% of Austrian households have taken out debt to finance housing. The probability of holding such debt is significantly higher for younger and higher- income...

For households that face a possibility of moving across MSAs, the risk of home owning depends on the covariance of the sale prices of their current houses with the purchase prices of their likely future houses. We find empirically that households tend to move between highly correlated MSAs,...

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...