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Working Paper
The Impact of Missed Payments and Foreclosures on Credit Scores
This paper debunks the common perception that ?foreclosure will ruin your credit score.? Using individual-level data from a credit bureau matched with loan-level mortgage data, it is estimated that the very first missed mortgage payment leads to the biggest reduction in credit scores. The effects of subsequent loan impairments are increasingly muted. Post-delinquency foreclosures have only a minimal effect on credit scores. Moreover, credit scores improve substantially a year after borrowers experience 90-day delinquency or foreclosure. The data supports one possible explanation of this ...
Working Paper
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Demand for Density: Evidence from the U.S. Housing Market
Cities are shaped by the strength of agglomeration and dispersion forces. We show that the COVID-19 pandemic has re-introduced disease transmission as a dispersion force in modern cities. We use detailed housing data to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the location demand for housing. We find that the pandemic has led to a greater decline in the demand for housing in neighborhoods with high population density. We further show that the reduced demand for density is partially driven by the diminished need of living close to jobs that are telework-compatible and the declining value ...
Working Paper
Are Central Cities Poor and Non-White?
For much of the 20th century, America's central cities were viewed as synonymous with economic and social hardship, often used as proxy for low-income communities of color. Since the 1990s, however, many metropolitan areas have seen a resurgence of interest in central city neighborhoods. Theoretical models of income sorting lead to ambiguous predictions about where households of different income levels will live within metropolitan areas. In this paper, we explore intra-city spatial patterns of income and race for U.S. metropolitan areas, focusing particularly on the locations of low-income ...
Newsletter
Homeowners insurance and climate change
Over the past 25 years, the U.S. has experienced a sharp increase in climate-related disasters totaling billions of dollars in damages. For those whose homes are destroyed, the financial impact can be devastating. Fortunately, many have some of their losses covered by homeowners insurance. In 2017—a particularly costly year in terms of weather-related damages—insurers reported around $68 billion in losses from homeowners insurance claims. Still, with the number and intensity of climate-related disasters on the rise, it is important for us to understand the degree to which homes are ...
Discussion Paper
Mortgage Rate Lock‑In and Homeowners’ Moving Plans
The U.S. housing market has had a tumultuous few years. After falling to record lows during the pandemic, the average 30-year mortgage rate rapidly increased in 2022 and 2023 and now hovers near a two-decade high of 7.2 percent. For those that locked in a low mortgage rate prior to 2022, this steep increase has significantly increased the cost of moving, as taking out a mortgage at current rates would potentially increase their monthly housing payment by hundreds or thousands of dollars, even if the amount they borrowed remained unchanged. As shown by Ferreira et al. (2011), this lock-in ...
Journal Article
The Homeownership Experience of Minorities During the Great Recession
It has been argued that during the Great Recession, wealth losses were more concentrated for college-educated Black and Hispanic families than for White and Asian college-educated families and their non-college-educated Black and Hispanic peers. This article explores the extent to which the homeownership experience for families who purchased homes between 2004 and 2008 is a potentially important factor in explaining this finding. During the housing boom, the increase in homeownership for Blacks and Hispanics was very similar, but the second group had a smaller decline. Despite these ...
Working Paper
The impact of student loan debt on small business formation
Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and account for approximately one-half of the private-sector economy and 99% of all businesses. To start a small business, individuals need access to capital. Given the importance of an entrepreneur?s personal debt capacity in financing a startup business, student loan debt, which is difficult to discharge via bankruptcy, can have lasting effects and may have an impact on the ability of future small business owners to raise capital. This study examines the impact of the growth in student debt on net small business formation. We find a ...
Report
Housing markets and residential segregation: impacts of the Michigan school finance reform on inter- and intra-district sorting
Local financing of public schools in the United States leads to a bundling of two distinct choices ? residential choice and school choice ? and has been argued to increase the degree of socioeconomic segregation across school districts. A school finance reform, aimed at equalization of school finances, can in principle weaken this link between housing choice and choice of schools. In this paper, we study the impacts of the Michigan school finance reform of 1994 (Proposal A) on spatial segregation. The reform was a state initiative intended to equalize per-pupil expenditures between Michigan ...
Working Paper
Mortgage Choice in the Housing Boom: Impacts of House Price Appreciation and Borrower Type
The U.S. housing boom during the first part of the past decade was marked by rapid house price appreciation and greater access to mortgage credit for lower credit-rated borrowers. The subsequent collapse of the housing market and the high default rates on residential mortgages raise the issue of whether the pace of house price appreciation and the mix of borrowers may have affected the influence of fundamentals in housing and mortgage markets. This paper examines that issue in connection with one aspect of mortgage financing, the choice among fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages. This ...
Discussion Paper
Deconstructing Mechanic’s Liens
In this paper, we examine a new data set composed of mechanic’s lien complaints filed in the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia County). Over a 10-year period, 426 mechanic’s liens were filed against 398 single-family properties, which is less than 0.1 percent of single-family properties in Philadelphia. The lien properties in our data set tend to be more expensive, newer, and larger than non-lien properties. About 80 percent of mechanic’s liens are filed by general contractors, with the remainder pursued by a subcontractor. Notably, a 2014 change in Pennsylvania law ...