This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of implicit government guarantees of Government-Sponsored Enterprises obligations. We construct a model with competitive housing and mortgage markets where the government provides banks with insurance against aggregate shocks to mortgage default risk. We use this model to evaluate aggregate and distributional impacts of this government subsidy to own...

Housing is the most important asset owned by the majority of Australian households. It is a large component of household wealth and serves a unique, dual role as an investment vehicle and a durable good from which consumption services are derived. With most mortgages and many small business loans secured against residential dwellings in Australia, housing also forms an important part of the col...

This article assesses the impact of public investment in supportive housing for homeless persons with severe mental disabilities. Data on 4,679 people placed in such housing in New York City between 1989 and 1997 were merged with data on the utilization of public shelters, public and private hospitals, and correctional facilities. A series of matched controls who were homeless but not placed in...

This paper studies residential real estate investors and their relationship with local house price movement using several comprehensive micro data on mortgage application and performance. The paper makes two contributions to the growing literature on the recent boom and bust of the US housing market. First, using mortgage application data, we document the important role played by real estate in...

Despite their importance as investment vehicles and as housing, very little analysis of multifamily markets has been undertaken to date. The literature that has been produced has, with few exceptions discussed below, focused on the aggregate national market, or occasionally on the regional market. But housing markets are well known to be local and diverse. The purpose of this paper is to examin...

The rate at which physical capital depreciates is fundamental to investment in the economy. Nevertheless, although housing capital accounts for one-third of the total capital stock, the rate at which housing capital depreciates has only rarely been directly estimated, in part because prior studies do not control for maintenance. For that same reason, widely publicized measures of house price ap...