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Accounting for changes in the homeownership rate

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Author Info
Matthew Chambers
Carlos Garriga
Don Schlagenhauf

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Abstract

After three decades of being relatively constant, the homeownership rate increased over the period 1994 to 2005 to attain record highs. The objective of this paper is to account for the observed boom in ownership by examining the role played changes in demographic factors and innovations in the mortgage market which lessened downpayment requirements. To measure the aggregate and distributional impact of these factors, we construct a quantitative general equilibrium overlapping generation model with housing. We find that the long-run importance of the introduction of new mortgage products for the aggregate homeownership rate ranges from 56 and 70 percent. Demographic factors account for between 16 and 31 percent of the change. Transitional analysis suggests that demographic factors play a more important, but not dominant, role the further away from the long-run equilibrium. From a distributional perspective, mortgage market innovations have a larger impact explaining participation rate changes of younger households, while demographic factors seem to be the key to understanding the participation rate changes of older households. Our analysis suggests that the key to understand the increase in the homeownership rate is the expansion of the set of mortgage contracts. We test the robustness of this result by considering changes in mortgage financing after World War II. We find that the introduction of the conventional fixed rate mortgage, which replaced balloon contacts, accounts for at least fifty percent of the observed increase in homeownership during that period.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in its series Working Papers with number 2007-034.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2007-034

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Keywords: Home ownership ; Mortgage loans;

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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    Other versions:
  5. Berkovec, James & Fullerton, Don, 1992. "A General Equilibrium Model of Housing, Taxes, and Portfolio Choice," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 390-429, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Rosen, Harvey S & Rosen, Kenneth T, 1980. "Federal Taxes and Homeownership: Evidence from Time Series," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 59-75, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2001. "Population Changes and Capital Accumulation: The Aging of the Baby Boom," Advances in Macroeconomics, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 1(advances/), pages 1008-1008. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Conesa, Juan Carlos & Krueger, Dirk, 2006. "On the optimal progressivity of the income tax code," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1425-1450, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Brueckner, Jan K, 1997. "Consumption and Investment Motives and the Portfolio Choices of Homeowners," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 159-80, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  20. Wenli Li, 2005. "Moving up: trends in homeownership and mortgage indebtedness," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Q1, pages 26-34. [Downloadable!]
  21. Henderson, J. Vernon & Ioannides, Yannis M., 1989. "Dynamic aspects of consumer decisions in housing markets," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 212-230, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  23. Jonas D. M. Fisher & Saad Quayyum, 2006. "The great turn-of-the-century housing boom," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q III, pages 29-44. [Downloadable!]
  24. Aiyagari, S Rao, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 109(3), pages 659-84, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  25. Lewis M. Segal & Daniel G. Sullivan, 1998. "Trends in homeownership: race, demographics, and income," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q II, pages 53-72. [Downloadable!]
Full references

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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Sang-Wook Stanley Cho, 2007. "Accounting for Lifecycle Wealth Accumulation: The Role of Housing Institution," Discussion Papers 2007-27, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales. [Downloadable!]
  2. Matthew S. Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don Schlagenhauf, 2007. "Equilibrium mortgage choice and housing tenure decisions with refinancing," Working Paper 2007-25, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Antonia Diaz & Maria Jose Luengo Prado, 2008. "On the User Cost and Homeownership," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(3), pages 584-613, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don Schlagenhauf, 2008. "The tax treatment of homeowners and landlords and the progressivity of income taxation," Working Paper 2008-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Sang-Wook Stanley Cho & Johanna Francis, 2008. "Tax Treatment of Owner Occupied Housing and Wealth Inequality," Fordham Economics Discussion Paper Series dp2008-17, Fordham University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  6. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don Schlagenhauf, 2007. "Mortgage contracts and housing tenure decisions," Working Papers 2007-040, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [Downloadable!]
  7. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2007. " Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," CDMA Conference Paper Series 0705, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis. [Downloadable!]
  8. Jonas D. M. Fisher & Martin Gervais, 2007. "First-time home buyers and residential investment volatility," Working Paper Series WP-07-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. [Downloadable!]
  9. Sang-Wook Stanley Cho, 2007. "Household Wealth Accumulation and Portfolio Choices in Korea," Discussion Papers 2007-26, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales. [Downloadable!]
  10. Jonas D. M. Fisher & Saad Quayyum, 2006. "The great turn-of-the-century housing boom," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q III, pages 29-44. [Downloadable!]
  11. Wenli Li & Rui Yao, 2005. "The life-cycle effects of house price changes," Working Papers 05-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
  12. Arce, Oscar & López-Salido, J David, 2006. "House Prices, Rents and Interest Rates Under Collateral Constraints," CEPR Discussion Papers 5689, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Thesia I. Garner & Randal Verbrugge, 2007. "Puzzling Divergence of U.S. Rents and User Costs, 1980-2004: Summary and Extensions," Working Papers 409, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. [Downloadable!]
  14. Carlos Garriga & William T. Gavin & Don Schlagenhauf, 2006. "Recent trends in homeownership," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Sep, pages 397-412. [Downloadable!]
  15. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don Schlagenhauf, 2009. "The loan structure and housing tenure decisions in an equilibrium model of mortgage choice," Working Papers 2008-024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [Downloadable!]
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