Understanding the housing choices of the older households will grow in importance as the baby boom generation starts to retire. This proposed analysis utilizes a rich longitudinal data set (PSID) to provide insight into the reasons that older households leave homeownership to become renters....

Amid concerns of how U.S. cities "sprawl", it is useful to look at the cities of other developed nations, in particular Western Europe which has attained U.S. - type prosperity, but which is reputed to have cities Americans should look to as a model. We examine recent data which suggest that...

In the last few decades, U.S. financial markets have witnessed a dramatic increase in the sophistication and size of the secondary market for mortgage loans. By 2002, close to 90 percent of conforming mortgage loan originations in the U.S. were sold into the secondary market. Although there is...

The existing literature in commercial mortgage defaults focuses on the process for loans in the current status to the default status. This study recognizes that commercial mortgage default is not a one-step process and examines a previously unexplored aspect in the whole default process, that is...

Social scientists studying the disadvantages of poor urban neighborhoods have focused on the quality of publicly provided amenities. However, the quantity and quality of local private amenities, such as grocery stores and restaurants, can also have important quality of life implications for...

The effects of two major demographic forces are traced between 1950 and 2040: the formation and aging of the baby boom generation and the reduction and subsequent return of large-scale immigration. These forces combine to mark several major turning points essential for understanding the changing...

This paper investigates the impact of spatially correlated unobservable variables on the refinancing, selling, and default decisions of mortgage borrowers. Virtually the entire mortgage literature acknowledges that borrower specific characteristics, such as culture, education, or access to...

As cities grow, what happens to urban form and how does that changetraffic conditions? How does growing traffic affect urban structure? Thesequestions have received considerable theoretical and empirical attention over thelast 25 years. They relate to the NIMBY debate, which associates most...

This study analyzes the impact of contemporaneous loan stress on the termination of loans in the commercial mortgage-backed securities pool using a novel measure, based on changes in net operating incomes and property values at the MSA-property type-year level. Employing a semi-parametric...

This paper argues for the importance of separating the bundled good of housing into land and improvements, because locational amenities – which often constitute a significant portion of property value – are typically capitalized into the value of land but not the value of the...