This paper describes the real wealth accumulation of American youth and relates this behavior to variations in real constant-quality house prices in their localities of residence. We argue that increases in the real constant-quality house price have two offsetting effects on wealth. First, the...

For well-diversified investors in depreciable real estate, the trading decision may be made with the sole objective of maximizing the property's depreciation tax shelter net of all capital gain taxes and transaction costs.This paper develops a dynamic programming model in which the optimal...

This paper surveys and interprets a wide body of literature on the taxation and subsidization of investment in owner-occupied and rental housing. Where available, the study considers experiences outside of the United States. Issues addressed include what nonneutral taxation is, how...

With a neutral tax system an increase in observed and anticipated inflation would not be expected to alter either real after-tax yields on bonds and equities or the ratio of the market value of equities to the replacement cost of corporate real capital. In the real world, however, declines in...

This paper examines semiannual ex post returns on corporate equities and bonds and six-month Treasury bills over the 1953-84 period with special emphasis on whether returns so far in the 1980s have been usual relative to the previous quarter century. The performance of the equity and bond...

Earlier research has shown that lender income and wealth constraint ratios discourage homeownership. This empirical research has been based on home purchasers using an 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) fixed-rate conventional loan. Employing the same assumption, we find that the constraints lowered...

This paper examines the effects of inflation on the allocation of resources between residential and nonresidential uses and the productivity of capital in the U.S. We begin by calculating the realized rates of return on homeowner equity and the contributions of fixed-rate mortgages and...

Real house prices are directly determined by the willingness of households to pay for (and willingness of builders to supply) a constant-quality house. Changes in the quantity of housing demanded will affect real prices only to the extent that the long-run housing supply schedule is positively...

During the last quarter century, mortgage interest deductibility has been gradually phased out. In 1974 a ceiling was set on the size of the mortgage eligible for interest deductibility (œ30,000 since 1983) and, beginning in 1993, the maximum rate at which interest under that ceiling could be...

A model is developed and utilized in this paper to value a life of loan interest rate cap on an ARM that reprices monthly. The value of the cap is seen to depend importantly on both the slope of the term structure and the variance of the one month rate. However, the cap value is not sensitive to...