This chapter considers the structure of mortgage finance in the United States and its role in shaping patterns of … homeownership, the nature of the housing stock, and the organization of residential activity. We start by providing some background … on the design features of mortgage contracts that distinguish them from other loans and that have important implications …

Home appraisals are produced for millions of residential mortgage transactions each year, but appraised values are … institutional framework that governs mortgage lending lead to information loss in appraisals (that is, appraisals set equal to the … incidence of mortgage default at loan-to-value boundaries (notches) above which mortgage insurance rates increase. Appraisals …

time-to-sell determines the mortgage standards of competitive lenders, measured by the maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratio …