This paper presents novel evidence of the effects of bidders' behavioral biases, and sellers' strategic responses, on the outcome of high-stakes auctions. We take advantage of the introduction of real estate “underquoting” laws as a natural experiment. The laws deter the practice of...

Little is known about the participation of small individual landlords in the rental market, and about rental income earned by households. Using unique tax filings data from Australia, we show that 20% of middle and retirement age median-income individuals are landlords. This fraction has risen...

This paper studies idiosyncratic risk at the level of individual house resales. It is commonly assumed that the idiosyncratic price component follows a random walk. I show that housing market data reject this model, and that idiosyncratic risk is instead close to constant for holding periods up...

Monetary policy works through financial markets to affect real consumer decisions. Buying a home is one of the most important consumer decisions, and we study the impact of the FOMC cycle on the timing and cost of mortgage applications. We find that the FOMC cycle is a focal point of attention...

Using data from the housing market of Los Angeles County, we show that experienced asset flippers earn sizable abnormal performance with respect to both investments in the U.S. stock market and in a passive mutual fund tracking a representative U.S. REIT index. Abnormal performance is positive...