IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/syd/wpaper/2024-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Structural Model of Mortgage Offset Accounts in the Australian Housing Market

Author

Listed:
  • James Graham

Abstract

I study a novel institutional feature of Australian housing markets: the widespread use of mortgage offset accounts. These accounts reduce mortgage interest costs and increase the liquidity of mortgage balances. I build a heterogeneous agent life-cycle model of the Australian housing market to study who benefits from these accounts and by how much. Households in middle age, with high incomes, and with more expensive houses are most likely to use offset accounts and derive larger benefits from their use. I show that a social planner could maintain mortgage profitability, improve household welfare, and more evenly distribute benefits by adjusting the price structure of offset accounts.

Suggested Citation

  • James Graham, 2024. "A Structural Model of Mortgage Offset Accounts in the Australian Housing Market," Working Papers 2024-09, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:syd:wpaper:2024-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ-wpseries.com/2024/202409.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2009. "Accounting For Changes In The Homeownership Rate," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(3), pages 677-726, August.
    2. Daniel Greenwald & Adam Guren, 2019. "Do Credit Conditions Move House Prices?," 2019 Meeting Papers 1334, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Kudrna, George & Woodland, Alan, 2011. "An inter-temporal general equilibrium analysis of the Australian age pension means test," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 61-79, March.
    4. Matt Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don Schlagenhauf, 2009. "The Loan Structure and Housing Tenure Decisions in an Equilibrium Model of Mortgage Choice," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(3), pages 444-468, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. James Graham & Avish Sharma, 2024. "Monetary Policy and the Homeownership Rate," CAMA Working Papers 2024-43, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Muñoz, Manuel A., 2020. "Macroprudential policy and the role of institutional investors in housing markets," Working Paper Series 2454, European Central Bank.
    2. Charles Ka Yui LEUNG, 2022. "Housing and Macroeconomics," ISER Discussion Paper 1197, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    3. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Joe Cho Yiu Ng, 2018. "Macro Aspects of Housing," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2018_016, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.
    4. repec:esx:essedp:712 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Patrick Bajari & Phoebe Chan & Dirk Krueger & Daniel Miller, 2013. "A Dynamic Model Of Housing Demand: Estimation And Policy Implications," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54(2), pages 409-442, May.
    6. Virgiliu Midrigan & Denis Gorea, 2017. "Liquidity Constraints in the U.S. Housing Market," 2017 Meeting Papers 802, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. repec:esx:essedp:717 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Krueger, Dirk, 2011. "Consumption And Saving Over The Life Cycle: How Important Are Consumer Durables?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(5), pages 725-770, November.
    9. Halket, Jonathan R & Pignatti, Matteo, 2012. "Housing tenure choices with private information," Economics Discussion Papers 8961, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    10. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2014. "Did Housing Policies Cause the Postwar Boom in Home Ownership?," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 351-385, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Cho, Sang-Wook (Stanley) & Sane, Renuka, 2013. "Means-Tested Age Pensions And Homeownership: Is There A Link?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(6), pages 1281-1310, September.
    12. Halket, Jonathan & Pignatti Morano di Custoza, Matteo, 2015. "Homeownership and the scarcity of rentals," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 107-123.
    13. Carlos Garriga & Finn E. Kydland & Roman Šustek, 2017. "Mortgages and Monetary Policy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(10), pages 3337-3375.
    14. Olympia Bover & Jose Maria Casado & Sonia Costa & Philip Du Caju & Yvonne McCarthy & Eva Sierminska & Panagiota Tzamourani & Ernesto Villanueva & Tibor Zavadil, 2016. "The Distribution of Debt across Euro-Area Countries: The Role of Individual Characteristics, Institutions, and Credit Conditions," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(2), pages 71-128, June.
    15. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    16. Yanbin Chen & Fangxing Li & Zhesheng Qiu, 2013. "Housing and Saving with Finance Imperfection," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 14(1), pages 207-248, May.
    17. Satyajit Chatterjee & Burcu Eyigungor, 2015. "A Quantitative Analysis of the US Housing and Mortgage Markets and the Foreclosure Crisis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 165-184, April.
    18. Shaofeng Xu, 2013. "An Equilibrium Analysis of the Rise in House Prices and Mortgage Debt," Staff Working Papers 13-9, Bank of Canada.
    19. Mnasri, A., 2015. "Renting vs buying a home: A matter of wealth accumulation or of geographic stability?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 42-72.
    20. Whelan, Stephen & Atalay, Kadir & Hayward, Richard Donald, 2018. "Asset portfolio retirement decisions: the role of the tax and transfer system," SocArXiv akj8w, Center for Open Science.
    21. Davis, Morris A. & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2015. "Housing, Finance, and the Macroeconomy," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 753-811, Elsevier.
    22. Anastasia Girshina, 2016. "Implications of Fiscal Policy for Housing Tenure Decisions," Working Papers 2014:, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing; mortgage; offset account; hetereogeneous agents; life-cycle model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:syd:wpaper:2024-09. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Vanessa Holcombe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deusyau.html .

    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.