Housing Markets and Mortgage Finance

Abstract: This Ph.D. thesis deals with questions related to the housing market, and answers the questions: "Does it matter if housing markets are underpriced?" and "How do the legal system and the loan contract affect those who default on their mortgage payments?"When selling a home, a popular marketing strategy is to set the list price far below market value. The idea is that a low list price will attract loads of buyers, who will push up the sale price. This thesis finds that a voluntary reform can reduce underpricing in the short run. Further, underpriced housing markets do indeed require more attention from potential buyers during all stages — online, at open houses, and during the bidding. This extra search effort is costly to society. However, underpricing is found not to affect the sale price, the time to sell, who the buyers are, or how hard the real estate agent works.The household's choice to default on a mortgage depends on the cost of the default (the legal system) and the mortgage contract. By studying a heterogeneous agent consumption/savings lifecycle model, this thesis finds that households prefer "lender friendly" laws that are costly for the homeowners upon default. This is because costly defaults yield fewer defaulters and thus lower interest rates, and thus are cheaper for non-defaulters. Households always prefer non-amortizing mortgages except when defaults do not have any cost associated with them, and they prefer adjustable rates over fixed rates. The benefits of costly defaults are particularly large for non-amortizing mortgages.The thesis concludes with the development of a new mathematical method to solve a particular class of dynamic programming problems, using stochastic simulated grids and nearest-neighbour interpolation.​