{"title":"Web-scraping housing prices in real-time: The Covid-19 crisis in the UK","authors":"Jean-Charles Bricongne , Baptiste Meunier , Sylvain Pouget","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101906","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>While official statistics provide lagged and aggregate information on the housing market, extensive information is available publicly on real-estate websites. By web-scraping them for the UK on a daily basis, this paper extracts a large database from which we build timely and highly granular indicators. One originality of the dataset is to focus on the supply side of the housing market, allowing to compute innovative indicators reflecting the sellers' perspective such as the number of new listings posted or how prices fluctuate over time for existing listings. Matching listing prices in our dataset with transacted prices from the notarial database, using machine learning, also measures the negotiation margin of buyers. During the Covid-19 crisis, these indicators demonstrate the freezing of the market and the “wait-and-see” behaviour of sellers. They also show that listing prices after the lockdown experienced a continued decline in London but increased in other regions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101906"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50171918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The geography of US homeownership tax expenditures","authors":"Casey J. Dawkins","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101888","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101888","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>US homeowners receive income tax deductions for mortgage interest payments and state and local property taxes, pay no income tax on their home's imputed rental income, and may exclude most of the capital gains earned from a home sale. This paper characterizes the geographic distribution of the tax expenditures from these tax preferences using a new method that exploits household-level microdata from the 2019 Census Public Use Microdata Sample to simulate homeownership tax expenditures at the Public Use Microdata Area level. I estimate that in the 2018 tax year, $226.05 billion in taxable revenue was lost to the mortgage interest deduction ($28.20 billion), the property tax deduction ($9.51 billion), the exclusion of net imputed rental income ($134.82 billion), and the partial exclusion of housing-related capital gains ($53.52 billion). Large metropolitan areas and neighborhoods with high housing prices receive subsidies in excess of the cost of funding homeowner tax preferences, while the burden of homeowner tax preferences falls heavily on rural areas. If federal income tax law reverted to what existed just prior to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, these geographic disparities would be exacerbated.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101888"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46450844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stuck at home: Housing demand during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"William Gamber , James Graham , Anirudh Yadav","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101908","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101908","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The COVID-19 pandemic induced an increase in both the amount of time that households spend at home and the share of expenditures allocated to at-home consumption. These changes coincided with a period of rapidly rising house prices. We interpret these facts as the result of stay-at-home shocks that increase demand for goods consumed at home as well as the homes that those goods are consumed in. We first test the hypothesis empirically using US cross-county panel data and instrumental variables regressions. We find that counties where households spent more time at home experienced faster increases in house prices. We then study various pandemic shocks using a heterogeneous agent model with general equilibrium in housing markets. Stay-at-home shocks explain around half of the increase in model house prices in 2020. Lower mortgage rates explain around one third of the price rise, while unemployment shocks and fiscal stimulus have relatively small effects on house prices. We find that young households and first-time home buyers account for much of the increase in housing demand during the pandemic, but they are largely crowded out of the housing market by the equilibrium rise in house prices.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101908"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9791792/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10821908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Single borrowers versus coborrowers in the pandemic: Mortgage forbearance take-up and performance","authors":"Laurie Goodman , Jun Zhu","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101909","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101909","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers initiated a forbearance program—that allowed borrowers to pause their mortgage payments—to prevent a large-scale foreclosure crisis. Using detailed loan-level performance data, we study forbearance take-up and subsequent performance among two distinct group of mortgage borrowers: single borrowers versus coborrowers. We provide stylized facts that compared to coborrowers, single borrowers have lower incomes, lower credit scores, higher loan-to-value ratios and higher debt-to-income ratios and are hence more financially vulnerable. We find that single borrowers are more apt to elect forbearance, all else constant. We further find that forbearance had a stronger positive effect on helping single borrowers avoid or recover and exit delinquency than coborrowers.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101909"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794396/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9310385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
André Kallåk Anundsen , Bjørnar Karlsen Kivedal , Erling Røed Larsen , Leif Anders Thorsrud
{"title":"Behavioral changes in the housing market before and after the Covid-19 lockdown","authors":"André Kallåk Anundsen , Bjørnar Karlsen Kivedal , Erling Røed Larsen , Leif Anders Thorsrud","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101907","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101907","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We exploit unique Norwegian day-by-day transaction and hour-by-hour bidding logs data in order to examine how market participants reacted to the spreading news of Covid-19 in early March 2020, the lockdown on March 12, and the re-opening on April 20. We observe changes on the date of the lockdown in transaction volumes, sell-prediction spreads, exploitative bidding behavior, and seller confidence. However, when we compare observed price developments with our estimated counter-factual price developments, we find that about half of the total fall in prices had already occurred before the lockdown was implemented. The re-opening completely reverses the lockdown effect on prices. We show that voluntary behavioral changes, as well as lockdown and re-opening effects, are visible in various measures of social mobility, and that changes in daily news sentiment correlate with the abnormal price movements during this period.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101907"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9756646/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10767354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aggregate-level inferences from individual-level data: The case of permanent supportive housing and housing first","authors":"Brendan O'Flaherty","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101913","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101913","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>I estimate the “simple mechanical effect” of permanent supportive housing and Housing First as studied in the At Home/Chez Soi and HUD-VASH experiments on point-in-time counts of homelessness (HUD definition). The simple mechanical effect is the effect that would occur in the absence of any behavioral responses aside from those in the experiments. The estimates of the simple mechanical effects overlap the confidence intervals in Corinth's (2017) regression study of the total effect. This finding suggests that the net effect of behavioral responses outside the experiments is small. The essay illustrates how useful inferences about aggregate-level phenomena can be derived from individual-level data.</p><p>I am grateful to Emmy Tiderington and Yi-Ping Tseng for helpful comments and information, and to an anonymous referee.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101913"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46115655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How ‘bad’ is renter protection for institutional investment in multifamily housing?","authors":"Meagan McCollum , Stanimira Milcheva","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101912","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101912","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We assess the role of state-level renter protection regulations on the pricing, performance and risk of multifamily housing. We construct a renter protection score (RPS) to measure the extent of renter protection in each state. Using a proprietary property-level dataset from loans backed by commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) and census tract socioeconomic variables, we study the role of RPS on initial capitalization (cap) rates, annual net operating income (NOI) and annual loan delinquency rates of multifamily housing. We find that, contrary to conventional wisdom that renter protection is ‘bad’ for investors, multifamily housing in high RPS states is associated higher annual NOI and NOI growth and lower delinquency rates. We also show that better tenant protection is associated with lower initial cap rates. The results point to investors perceiving properties in more regulated states as lower risk due to reduced income volatility. For institutional investors, higher levels of renter protection are, therefore, not ‘bad’ but are instead associated with lower cash flow volatility and better income growth prospects.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101912"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50171915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Demons of density do higher-density environments put people at greater risk of contagious disease?","authors":"Ingrid Gould Ellen, Renata Howland, Sherry Glied","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101905","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101905","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We study the relationship between density and COVID during three distinct waves of the pandemic in New York City. Unlike prior work, our analysis uses individual Medicaid claims records, which include a rich array of demographic characteristics and pre-existing medical conditions and cover a near universe of low-income New Yorkers. In brief, our results suggest that living in higher density neighborhoods did not heighten the risk of COVID hospitalization. The size of a multifamily building made little difference either, and people living in public housing developments, which are typically highly dense environments, were <em>less</em> likely to be hospitalized for COVID. However, while neighborhood and building density do not seem to matter, we find significant, positive relationships between COVID hospitalization rates and household size. Specifically, we see that people living in large households or in neighborhoods with high levels of crowding were more likely to be hospitalized for COVID. In other words, our results suggest that crowded living quarters – which can occur at any level of population density – and not density itself, increase the risk of COVID hospitalization. We also see a strong correlation between being unstably housed or living in institutional settings and COVID hospitalizations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101905"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42770575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Housing discrimination in the low-income context: Evidence from a correspondence experiment","authors":"Eric W. Chan , Yulian Fan","doi":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101889","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhe.2022.101889","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper uses a correspondence experiment across the northeastern corridor of the US to examine landlord responses to prospective tenants inquiries through a low-income housing rental web site. We find multiple forms of discrimination against African-American tenants, including less responses, responses with less greeting and polite words being used, and levels of discrimination that progressively increases along measures of school quality and neighborhood characteristics. In contrast, we find substantially less evidence of discrimination against voucher holders. Voucher holders do not see lower rates of response, though responses arrive later on average and they face lower rates of responses in neighborhoods with very high quality schools. The results demonstrate that racial discrimination is substantial even in a context where landlords advertise to low-income families, though discrimination against voucher holders may be attenuated.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51490,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Housing Economics","volume":"59 ","pages":"Article 101889"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46158693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}