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Leaving Households Behind: Institutional Investors and the U.S. Housing Recovery

Author

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  • Lauren Lambie-Hanson
  • Wenli Li
  • Michael Slonkosky

Abstract

Ten years after the mortgage crisis, the U.S. housing market has rebounded significantly with house prices now near the peak achieved during the boom. Homeownership rates, on the other hand, have continued to decline. We reconcile the two phenomena by documenting the rising presence of institutional investors in this market. Our analysis makes use of housing transaction data. By exploiting heterogeneity in zip codes' exposure to the First Look program instituted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that affected investors' access to foreclosed properties, we establish the causal relationship between the increasing presence of institutions in the housing market and the subsequent recovery in house prices and decline in homeownership rates between 2007 and 2014. We further demonstrate that institutional investors contributed to the improvement in the local labor market by reducing overall unemployment rate and by increasing total employment, construction employment in particular. Local housing rents also rose.

Suggested Citation

  • Lauren Lambie-Hanson & Wenli Li & Michael Slonkosky, 2019. "Leaving Households Behind: Institutional Investors and the U.S. Housing Recovery," Working Papers 19-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:19-1
    DOI: 10.21799/frbp.wp.2019.01
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    Cited by:

    1. Muñoz, Manuel A., 2020. "Macroprudential policy and the role of institutional investors in housing markets," Working Paper Series 2454, European Central Bank.
    2. Carlos Garriga & Athena Tsouderou & Pedro Gete, 2019. "Housing Dynamics without Homeowners. The Role of I," 2019 Meeting Papers 1407, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Michael J. Seiler & Liuming Yang, 2023. "The burgeoning role of iBuyers in the housing market," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 51(3), pages 721-753, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    housing; homeownership; mortgage crises;
    All these keywords.

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