Felipe Severino

Credit Supply and House Prices: Evidence from Mortgage Market Segmentation

We show that easier access to credit significantly increases house prices by using exogenous changes in the conforming loan limit as an instrument for lower cost of financing. Houses that become eligible for financing with a conforming loan show an increase in house value of 1.16 dollars per square foot (for an average price per square foot of 220 dollars) and higher overall house prices controlling for a rich set of house characteristics. However, these estimated coefficients are consistent with a local elasticity of house prices to interest rates that is lower than some previous studies proposed (below 10). In addition, loan to value ratios around the conforming loan limit deviate significantly from the common 80 percent norm, which confirms that it is an important factor in the financing choices of home buyers. In line with our interpretation, the results are stronger in the first half of our sample (1998-2001) when the conforming loan limit was more important, given that other forms of financing were less common and substantially more expensive. Results are also stronger in zip codes where personal income growth is low or declining, and in regions with lower elasticity of housing supply.

Loan Originations and Defaults in the Mortgage Crisis: Further Evidence

This paper addresses two critiques by Mian and Sufi (2015a, 2015b) that were released in response to the results documented in Adelino, Schoar and Severino (2015). We confirm that none of the results in our previous paper are affected by the issues put forward in these critiques; in particular income overstatement does not drive any of our results. Our analysis shows that the origination of purchase mortgages increased across the whole income distribution during the 2002-2006 housing boom, and did not flow disproportionately to low-income borrowers. In addition, middle- and high-income, as well as middle- and high-credit-score borrowers (not the poor), represent a larger fraction of delinquencies in the crisis relative to earlier periods. The results are inconsistent with the idea that distortions in the origination of credit caused the housing boom and the crisis and are more consistent with an expectations-based view where both home buyers and lenders were buying into increasing housing values and defaulted once prices dropped.

Perception of House Price Risk and Homeownership

This paper analyzes the importance of household perceptions of house price risk in explaining homeownership choice. While a majority of US households (71%) believes that housing is a “safe�? investment, renters are much more likely to perceive housing as risky. Risk perceptions vary across demographic groups, but significant differences persist after controlling for observables, such as income, savings, or location. Current housing decisions and future intentions to buy versus rent are strongly correlated with perceptions of house price risk. Households’ exposure to housing risk due to financial constraints, expected mobility or labor income risk affect the decision to buy versus rent but do not mitigate the impact of risk perceptions on housing choices. Finally, we show that all households update their beliefs about the riskiness of housing in response to past (local) house price changes, but renters are much slower to update than owners. Since renters’ decisions to buy are especially sensitive to their perception of house price risk, it might explain their delayed entry into home ownership during a house price run-up and even prolong the housing cycle. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Dynamics of Housing Debt in the Recent Boom and Great Recession

This paper documents a number of key facts about the evolution of mortgage debt, homeownership, debt burden, and subsequent delinquency during the recent housing boom and Great Recession. We show that the mortgage expansion was shared across the entire income distribution; that is, the flow and stock of debt rose across all income groups (except for the top 5%). The mortgage expansion was especially pronounced in areas with increased house prices, and the speed at which houses turned over (churn) in these areas went up significantly. However, the average loan-to-value ratios (LTV) at origination did not increase over the boom period. While homeownership rates increased for the middle- and upper-income households, there was no increase in homeownership for the lowest income groups. Finally, default rates postcrisis went up predominantly in areas with large house price drops, especially for high-income and high-FICO borrowers. These results are consistent with a view that the run-up in mortgage debt over the precrisis period was driven by rising home values and expectations of increasing prices.