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...

In contrast to the prediction of the present-value model, many empirical studies find the price-rent ratio nonstationary. This finding is frequently interpreted as evidence of speculative bubbles. In this paper, we seek an alternative explanation. Allowing the expectations of future housing...

This study examines how heterogeneous traders on both sides of transactions behave in the housing market under information asymmetry. Two types of buyers, namely, informed and uninformed buyers, correspond to local and non-local buyers in the empirical tests. Non-local housing buyers in Hong...

This chapter surveys the literature on housing in macroeconomics. We first collect facts on house prices and quantities in both the time series and the cross section of households and housing markets. We then present a theoretical model of frictional housing markets with heterogeneous agents...

This paper analyzes the role of uncertainty in a multi-sector housing model with financial frictions. We include time varying uncertainty (i.e. risk shocks) in the technology shocks that affect housing production. The analysis demonstrates that risk shocks to the housing production sector are a...

We provide the first solid evidence that Chinese superstitious beliefs can have significant effects on house prices in a North American market with a large immigrant population. Using real estate data on close to 117,000 house sales, we find that houses with address number ending in four are...

This paper investigates the U.S. housing price dynamics from the perspective of speculative trading, in addition to the macro-finance factors such as the stock market, household disposable income and nominal interest rate. It is found that among the speculative investors, fundamental traders...

This paper provides a formal analysis on a well-known issue of the housing market observable transaction prices are a biased indication of the true market condition if significant numbers of listed properties are delisted without sale. We provide a closed-form formula to identify and correct...

The U.S. residential housing market collapse illustrates the consequences of ignoring risk while funding mortgage borrowing. Collateral over-valuation was a foundational piece of the crisis. Over the past few decades, secondary markets, securitization, policy and psychology increased the flow of...