The share of older households with debt secured by their primary residence more than doubled between 1995 and 2016. This study uses the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to…
The economic pain we are experiencing in the wake of the pandemic calls for unprecedented government action to contain the fallout from a policy-induced economic coma. It…
Even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac returned to very-low down payment lending following the financial crisis, saving for a down payment remains one of the biggest barriers…
Kristin Perkins, Shannon Rieger, Jonathan Spader, Chris Herbert
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October 21, 2019
Previous studies of the financial constraints for homeownership attainment have found that cash grants to cover down payment and closing costs can fairly substantially…
Michael Stegman, Richard Cooperstein
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October 9, 2019
Over the years, with the approval of their regulator/conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) put in place an opaque…
Michael Stegman, Richard Cooperstein
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October 9, 2019
With the passing of the eleventh anniversary of GSE conservatorship and the release of the administration’s long-awaited housing finance reform plans, longstanding…
Elizabeth La Jeunesse, Alexander Hermann, Daniel McCue, Jonathan Spader
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September 17, 2019
Housing affordability has been a growing concern across the US over the past three decades. Indeed, between 1990 and 2017, the number of units renting for under $600…
First-time homebuyers increasingly include never-married households and newly-formed households, according to a new working paper I co-authored with Shannon Rieger and Sean…
Like cicada swarms, presidential commissions and federal initiatives to eliminate local barriers to housing development have a certain temporal cadence. By my accounting,…