This study examines the heterogeneous appraiser behavior and its implication on the traditional appraisal smoothing theory. We show that the partial adjustment model is consistent with the traditional appraisal smoothing argument (Geltner 1989) only when all the appraisers choose the same...

House prices often exhibit serial correlation and mean reversion. Using two large panel datasets, this paper analyzes the price dynamics in two significantly different types of markets, cyclical (or volatile) and non-cyclical (or tame), by applying the autoregressive mean reversion (ARMR) model....

Amendments to the Fair Lending Act have exempted an age restriction on ownership from fair housing prohibitions. This paper studies the economic impact of such ownership restriction on housing values. Using American Housing Survey data, we find that there is a significant premium attached to the...

This paper documents women on average pay more for mortgages than men. The disparity cannot be fully explained by traditional variables such as mortgage features, borrower characteristics, and market conditions. While the persistence of gender disparity may suggest discrimination, we offer a...

Thinly-traded private assets do not fit into the traditional finance paradigm of a liquid and well-functioning market where trading is continuous and instantaneous. Since private assets cannot be bought and sold easily, they bear liquidity risk. Classical finance theories cannot properly gauge...

Investment in thinly-traded private assets involves liquidity risk. Existing literature provides limited guidance as it mainly focuses on publicly-traded security assets such as stocks and bonds. This paper develops an analytical tool for quantifying liquidity risk of private assets. Using...

This paper investigates price distortions in dual agent real estate transactions. Consistent with the literature, we find that dual agent has a null effect on sale price. However, dual agent distortions on sale price emerge after controlling for the ownership of the property. We find that dual...

This paper documents women on average pay more for mortgages than men. The disparity cannot be fully explained by traditional variables such as mortgage features, borrower characteristics, and market conditions. While the persistence of gender disparity may suggest discrimination, we offer a...

This paper comments on the Weighted Repeated Sales (WRS) method in Case and Shiller (1989). We find that Case-Shiller's model for step-two of WRS is conceptually mis-specified and empirically inaccurate, which are likely to cause the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices to be biased for the most...

The role of selling (or marketing) period uncertainty in understanding risk associated with property investment is examined in this paper. Using an approach developed by Lin and Vandell [2001, 2005] and Lin [2004], combined with a statistical model of UK commercial property transactions, we show...