Search Results
Working Paper
Volatility in Home Sales and Prices: Supply or Demand?
We use a housing search model and data on individual home listings to decompose fluctuations in home sales and price growth into supply or demand factors. Simulations of the estimated model show that housing demand drives short-run fluctuations in home sales and prices, while variation in supply plays only a limited role. We consider two implications of these results. First, we show that reduction of supply was a minor factor relative to increased demand in the tightening of housing markets during COVID-19. New for-sale listings would have had to expand 30 percent to keep the rate of price ...
Journal Article
The 2014 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data
This article provides an overview of the 2014 data reported under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 and analyzes mortgage market activity over time as well as lending patterns across different demographic groups and lender types. The number of home-purchase originations was about 4 percent higher in 2014 than in 2013, while the number of refinance loans was 55 percent lower. We document an increasing share of mortgage loans originated by independent, nondepository mortgage companies. In addition, we analyze the possible effects of recent changes to rules regulating the mortgage market.
Discussion Paper
The Decline in Lending to Lower-Income Borrowers by the Biggest Banks
Data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) reveal that the largest banks have significantly reduced their share of mortgage lending to low- and moderate-income (LMI) households in recent years.
Discussion Paper
Assessing the Community Reinvestment Act's Role in the Financial Crisis
An important question arising out of the financial crisis is whether the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) played a significant role in the subprime mortgage boom and bust by pushing banks to make loans to risky borrowers.
Discussion Paper
Credit Availability and the Decline in Mortgage Lending to Minorities after the Housing Boom
This note sheds light on the factors contributing to the disproportionate decline in lending to minorities since 2006.
Working Paper
"Revitalize or Stabilize": Does Community Development Financing Work?
Banks in the United States originate $100 billion in community development loans every year and hold a similar amount of community development investments on their balance sheets. A number of federal place-based policies encourage the provision of these loans and investments to promote growth, employment and the availability of affordable housing to disadvantaged communities. Research into the effectiveness of privately supplied community development financing has been hampered, however, by the lack of comprehensive data on banks' community development activities at a local level. Hand ...