IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v89y2022i3p1120-1154..html

Liquidity Constraints in the U.S. Housing Market

Author

Listed:
  • Corina Boar
  • Denis Gorea
  • Virgiliu Midrigan

Abstract

We study the severity of liquidity constraints in the U.S. housing market using a life-cycle model with uninsurable idiosyncratic risks in which houses are illiquid, but agents can extract home equity by refinancing their mortgages. The model implies that four-fifths of homeowners are liquidity constrained and willing to pay an average of 13 cents to extract an additional dollar of liquidity from their home. Most homeowners value liquidity for precautionary reasons, anticipating the possibility of income declines and the need to make mortgage payments. The model reproduces well the observed response of consumption to tax rebates and mortgage relief programs and predicts large welfare gains from policies aimed at providing temporary liquidity relief to homeowners.

Suggested Citation

  • Corina Boar & Denis Gorea & Virgiliu Midrigan, 2022. "Liquidity Constraints in the U.S. Housing Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(3), pages 1120-1154.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:89:y:2022:i:3:p:1120-1154.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdab063
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ghoddusi, Hamed & Afkhami, Mohamad, 2019. "Valuation of mortgage interest deductibility under uncertainty: An option pricing approach," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 102-122.
    2. Bontemps, Christian & Cherbonnier, Frédéric & Magnac, Thierry, 2023. "Reducing transaction taxes on housing in highly regulated economies”," TSE Working Papers 23-1486, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    3. Goodman, Sarena & Isen, Adam & Yannelis, Constantine, 2021. "A day late and a dollar short: Liquidity and household formation among student borrowers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 1301-1323.
    4. Benjamin L. Collier & Daniel A. Hartley & Benjamin J. Keys & Jing Xian Ng, 2024. "Credit When You Need It," NBER Working Papers 32845, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Yunho Cho & Shuyun May Li & Lawrence Uren, 2024. "Stamping out stamp duty: Housing mismatch and welfare," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), pages 381-426, May.
    6. Maiko Koga & Kohei Matsumura, "undated". "Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Housing Choice," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 20-E-3, Bank of Japan.
    7. Myroslav Pidkuyko, 2023. "Heterogeneous Spillovers of Housing Credit Policy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 39-59, December.
    8. Mølbak Ingholt, Marcus, 2022. "Multiple Credit Constraints and Time-Varying Macroeconomic Dynamics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    9. Sala, Hector & Trivin, Pedro, 2024. "Household finances, debt overhang and consumption patterns," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    10. Yunho Cho & James Morley & Aarti Singh, 2024. "Did marginal propensities to consume change with the housing boom and bust?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(1), pages 174-199, January.
    11. Joyce, Matthew & Singh, Aarti, 2025. "Income uncertainty, precautionary wealth, and social insurance," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    12. repec:osf:socarx:p59te_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Pesce, Simone & Zhang, Liang, 2025. "Mortgage refinancing and the marginal propensity to consume," Working Paper Series 3051, European Central Bank.
    14. Claes Bäckman & Peter van Santen, 2020. "The Amortization Elasticity of Mortgage Demand," Economics Working Papers 2020-16, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    15. Pesce, Simone & Zhang, Liang, 2025. "Mortgage Refinancing and the Marginal Propensity to Consume," Research Technical Papers 10/RT/25, Central Bank of Ireland.
    16. DiSalvo, Richard W. & Yu, Jia H., 2023. "Housing Affordability and School Quality in the United States," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    17. Bäckman, Claes & Lutz, Chandler, 2020. "The impact of interest-only loans on affordability," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    18. Ong, Rachel & Graham, James & Cigdem, Melek & Phelps, Christopher & Whelan, Stephen, 2023. "Financing first home ownership: modelling policy impacts at market and individual levels," SocArXiv p59te, Center for Open Science.
    19. Alina Bartscher & Moritz Kuhn & Moritz Schularick & Ulrike Steins, 2025. "The Distribution of Household Debt in the United States, 1950-2022," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 57, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:89:y:2022:i:3:p:1120-1154.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.