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Research
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Working Paper 25-02: Disclosure Dilemmas: How Appraisal Information Reshapes Residential Property Valuations for Mortgage Lending
We find a puzzling increase in home valuations following the adoption of stricter flood standards. At the same time, we are observing shifts in appraisers’ valuation practices. Specifically, appraisers reduce negative language, use fewer flood-zone comparables, and apply smaller adjustments to...
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Working Paper 25-01: The Male and Female Gap in Home Appraisals
Using 24 million appraisals for refinance mortgages over the January 2013 to March 2024 period and comparing homes in the same census tract and year-quarter, we find that homes of single female households are appraised for 2.4% less than those of single men. Appraisers make lower adjustments to...
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Working Paper 24-11: Individual Borrower Motivations Surrounding Mortgage Forbearance Take-Up and Exit
Borrower perceptions and beliefs about the future influence mortgage forbearance decisions. Using a proprietary dataset combining administrative mortgage records with borrower surveys, we find subjective expectations regarding forbearance uncertainty and financial knowledge help predict forbearance...
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Working Paper 24-10: European Energy Crisis: Did Electricity Prices Shock Real Estate Markets?
This paper investigates the impact of the 2021–2022 European energy crisis, a significant macro-financial shock, on homebuyer willingness-to-pay for energy-efficient homes in Norway. Leveraging the country’s electricity market—characterized by five distinct regions with varying exposure to European...
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The Size of the Affordable Mortgage Market: 2025-2027 Enterprise Single-Family Housing Goals - December 2024
In establishing benchmarks for the single-family home purchase and refinance goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is required to measure the size of the affordable mortgage market. This FHFA technical report documents the statistical...
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Working Paper 24-08: Banking on Buffers: Balance Sheet Responses to Household Demand, Macroeconomic Conditions, and Monetary Policy
This paper examines how banks adapt to tightening regulations, evolving macroeconomic conditions, and changes in household demand. Unlike most analyses of banking regulation, we develop a general equilibrium model in which banks both borrow from and lend to households, allowing us to assess the...
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Working Paper 24-06: Home Purchase Appraisals in Minority Neighborhoods
We study how the share of African American residents in a neighborhood impacts appraisers’ valuation decisions for home purchases. Controlling for many appraisal inputs, including the appraiser themselves, we find that appraisals below the contract price are at least 23 percent more likely in...
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The Size of the Affordable Mortgage Market: 2025-2027 Enterprise Single-Family Housing Goals
In establishing benchmarks for the single-family home purchase housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is required to measure the size of the mortgage market. This FHFA technical report documents the statistical forecast models that...
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Working Paper 24-05: Tracking Our Footprint: CO2 Emissions from US Single-Family Homes
We estimate residential energy use and CO2 emissions for single-family homes using administrative data from approximately 45 million property appraisals, or 1.8 billion property-month observations. First, we find that from 2013 to 2021, CO2 emissions decreased by 8.8 percent in aggregate while...
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Working Paper 24-04: Measuring Price Effects from Disasters Using Public Data: A Case Study of Hurricane Ian
Natural disasters can disrupt housing markets, causing destruction to communities and distress to economic activity. To estimate the effects of disasters on home prices, publicly-available data on property damages are often used to classify “treated” properties. However, by design these data lack...