Eliminating Housing Tax Preferences: A Distributional Analysis

We examine the distributional impact of potential changes in the tax treatment of owner-occupied housing in this paper. In particular, we focus on the removal of mortgage interest and local property tax deductibility. A theoretical model of the demand for housing is developed that captures the impact of removing these deductions on housing demand. Then, we use a large cross section of individual income tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service for 1990 to estimate the distributional effects of removing housing deductions. Taxpayers are ranked by income and tax liability, both with and without the housing deductions. By comparing tax liability under the alternative regimes, and composing measures of the distributional impact of removing housing tax deductions using the classic Suits index, we assess both revenue neutral and nonrevenue neutral distributional effects. Results in both cases indicate that the removal of the tax deductibility of mortgage interest and property taxes would increase the progressivity of the income tax substantially.     

Negative equity and wages

We examine the relationship between housing equity and wage earnings using nine waves of the national American Housing Survey from 1985 to 2003. Employing a rich set of time and place controls, a synthetic mortgage instrumental variable strategy, and a first difference estimator we find that people underwater on their mortgage command a significantly lower wage than other homeowners. The finding survives a number of robustness checks for reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity. We also explore other determinants of “house lock” including loss aversion, a low existing mortgage interest rate and property tax assessment caps, but do not find these factors mitigate the effect of negative equity on wages.     

Mortgage Subsidy—the Myth

Is tax relief on mortgage interest a subsidy to the home owner or do private house-holders live in the shadow of Westminster (above)? Professor Parry Lewis challenges the Report of the Committee chaired by the Duke of Edinburgh, and argues for the retention of relief.     

The Impact of Thin‐Capitalization Rules on External Debt Usage – A Propensity Score Matching Approach

Thin‐capitalization rules (TCRs) aim at limiting the tax advantage of internal debt financing by restricting the tax deductibility of the corresponding interest expenses. This article examines how subsidiaries of multinational firms respond to a change in the German thin‐capitalization legislation. The empirical analysis not only demonstrates that the TCR effectively restricts internal debt financing, it also suggests that firms are able to avoid taxation of interest by substituting external for internal debt. The empirical approach applies propensity score matching techniques and exploits the German tax reform 2001 to solve endogeneity problems.     

Evidence on the Demand for Mortgage Debt by Owner-Occupants

This paper explores the relationship between household mortgage debt burdens and housing consumption, periodic income, nonhousing wealth, the income tax position of the household, expected mobility, and other micro-level characteristics that proxy for household risk preferences and life cycle effects. We use 1985 and 1989 American Housing Survey data to estimate mortgage debt level equations simultaneous with house value equations, controlling for the contemporaneous nature of these two choices. We find that larger debt levels are positively associated with greater value residences and with the level of household income. Numerous household level demographic characteristics are also systematically related to mortgage demand. Of particular interest are our findings that the use of mortgage debt is affected significantly by the rate of tax savings on mortgage interest deductions and by the expected mobility of the household.     

The supply of mortgage lending

This paper estimates the elasticity of supply of mortgage lending and tests the impact of the “availability” of funds on the markets for new housing and mortgage loans. Depending upon whether mortgage relative to total lending or the mortgage, Aaa bond yield differential is taken as the left-hand variable, the supply elasticity is found to be about 1 or about 5. No compelling evidence is found, however, that either federal agency purchases of mortgages or disintermediation has had an impact upon the supply of mortgage loans. The latter is more consistent with a relatively elastic supply of mortgage funds than with segmented mortgage markets. Examination of the determinants of both real house prices and of private residential construction also fails to reveal any significant impact of federal agency purchases or of disintermediation. It would appear, however, that real house prices are highly responsive to interest rates and that the elasticity of supply of new housing is about 5. Fluctuations in new construction would thus appear to be explainable by fluctuations in interest rates.     

Barriers to homeownership and housing quality: The impact of the international mortgage market

International mortgage markets can play an important role in stimulating affordable housing markets and improving housing quality in many countries. Unfortunately, international mortgage markets are often less developed than in the United State. This lack of development often translates into lower homeownership rates or lower housing quality. The problems faced in international mortgage markets include but are not limited to (1) legal systems that delay foreclosure proceedings, (2) incomplete or weak financial institutions, (3) high inflation, and (4) cultural barriers to mortgage market development and homeownership.     

Using a decision tree to analyze mortgage borrower decision behavior and values concerning interest rates and house prices

In reality, mortgage borrowers are more seriously concerned with the current mortgage boundary (i.e. option exercise) value than with the current option value (i.e. expected present value of the prospective option exercise value). Hence, by combining a simulation framework and a decision tree, the terminations of mortgage behavior can be classified forward but not backward as by the binomial lattice. After simulating 5000 projections for both Taiwan house prices and interest rates, as well as computing for current mortgage boundary values obtained by modifying Ambrose and Buttimer ( 2000 ) to step through the mortgage decision tree, the result shows that the prepayment is affected by rising interest rate volatility. Moreover, the delinquency and the reinstatement are affected by both rising interest rate and house price volatilities. However, due to the cost of delinquency and credit penalties, the foreclosure could not compete over the reinstatement when house prices and interest rates are in a high‐volatility situation. The reinstatement is encouraging for the borrowers. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

企业所得税对债务融资影响分析——基于我国上市公司的实证研究

本文主要研究了企业所得税对企业债务融资决策产生的影响。研究结论支持了修正的MM理论关于税收对企业的债务融资决策有影响的观点。研究表明:在我国上市公司的债务融资决策中,企业所得税是考虑的因素之一,主要表现在其他条件相同的情况下,实际税率较高的企业债务融资的利用程度较高,享受税盾利益的动机相对较强。同时在我国上市公司中,债务性税盾与非债务性税盾的替代作用并不明显。     

Proposal for calculating regulatory capital requirements for reverse mortgages

In the current context in which many people worry about the sustainability of pension systems, reverse mortgages are gaining popularity because they are a way to supplement elderly people's incomes. However, it is necessary to provide banks with an adequate risk measurement and management procedure for reverse mortgages to increase the commercialization of these products, which will result in greater well-being for the retirement age population. In this paper, we propose a method to measure risk and estimate the regulatory capital requirements for a portfolio of reverse mortgages owned by a financial institution according to Basel II and III. The method considers house price risk, mortality risk and interest rate risk; consequently, regulatory capital requirements need to be computed using a Monte Carlo simulation procedure. The proposed method is general and can accommodate several scenarios for reverse mortgage specifications, including fixed or variable mortgage rates and different income stream schemes (with the lump sum as a particular case). The results for the U.K. show that reverse mortgage providers face higher risk when the lender initially advances a higher amount, with the lump-sum case indicating the highest risk, for relatively younger borrowers, the female population, higher interest rates and floating mortgage rates.     

Mortgage Valuation with Optimal Intertemporal Refinancing Strategies

This article extends previous work on mortgage valuation in two ways. First, I identify the prepayment boundary by solving for the borrower's optimal prepayment strategy over the expected tenure in the house. Previous work has treated the prepayment decision as a one-time decision, not as an element of a multiperiod strategy. Second, the model incorporates borrower heterogeneity in terms of expected tenure in the house. The results show that the optimal refinancing strategy differs significantly from a sequence of one-time decisions. A borrower following the optimal strategy is less aggressive in refinancing and pays more interest and less transaction costs than does a borrower following a myopic strategy. Estimated mortgage values are higher and interest rate sensitivity is lower when compared to values calculated using the traditional approach.     

Federal deductibility and local property tax rates

Recent econometric work has suggested that federal deductibility of state and local taxes has raised the proportion of these taxes—especially property taxes—in local budgets. This paper lends additional support to these earlier findings by showing that one channel through which deductibility leads to higher local property tax revenues is by increasing the rate of local property taxation. Specifically, we find that if deductibility were eliminated, the mean property tax rate in our sample would fall by 0.00715 ($7.15 per $1000 of assessed property), or 21.1% of the mean tax rate.     

Interest rates, income, and home improvement decisions

The demand for additional housing is modeled demonstrating that higher interest rates make home improvements more attractive relative to moving when homeowners hold fixed rate mortgages. Technological constraints on home improvements make improving less attractive relative to moving when incomes have risen. Empirical evidence using cross-sectional data is presented suggesting that the probability of making home improvements is positively related to increases in the current interest rate and negatively related to increases in income. An explanation is offered for the recent rise in home improvement expenditures in the face of slower economic growth and higher mortgage interest rates.     

An Examination of Mortgage Debt Characteristics and Financial Risk among Multifamily Properties

Using the 1996 Property Owners and Managers Survey (POMS), the authors (1) examine the mortgage debt characteristics of multifamily properties; (2) estimate the size and potential for growth of the multifamily mortgage debt market; and (3) examine the financial characteristics of multifamily properties, each with particular attention to differences by property size. While the authors find that the POMS suffers from severe missing value problems, their analysis indicates large differences in the likelihood that a property has a mortgage, the interest rate conditional on having a mortgage, and indicators of financial distress among properties of different size. They also find that smaller properties, with large potential for growth in multifamily mortgage lending, have much higher concentrations of low- to moderate-income tenants but that larger properties provide the bulk of units that serve these renters.     

论个人住房贷款发展的困境、原因及化解

近期，国内商业银行出现了普遍的“额度荒”问题，大多研究认为这一现象是周期性和短期性的。但其实是商业银行经营的内外环境发生了根本的变化，如存贷款利率市场化加速，传统的房贷业务不适应银行经营环境的变化。房贷“额度荒”反映的是商业性金融追求盈利与政策性金融的冲突，本质上则是政策性住房银行缺失的结果。发达国家在位房需求增长较快时期均通过成立政纂性住房金融机构来满足住房融资需求，我国也要成立真正的政策性住房银行，这才是解决房贷困境的根本出路。     

Mortgage default in an estimated model of the U.S. housing market

This paper models the housing sector, mortgages and endogenous default in a DSGE setting with nominal and real rigidities. We use data for the period 1981–2006 to estimate our model using Bayesian techniques. We analyze how an increase in risk in the mortgage market raises the default rate and spreads to the rest of the economy, creating a recession. In our model two shocks are well suited to replicate the subprime crisis and the Great Recession: the mortgage risk shock and the housing demand shock. Next we use our estimated model to evaluate a policy that reduces the principal of underwater mortgages. This policy is successful in stabilizing the mortgage market and makes all agents better off.     

Valuation of fixed and variable rate mortgages: binomial tree versus analytical approximations

The recombining binomial tree approach, which has been initiated by Cox et?al. (J Financ Econ 7: 229?C263, 1979) and extended to arbitrary diffusion models by Nelson and Ramaswamy (Rev Financ Stud 3(3): 393?C430, 1990) and Hull and White (J Financ Quant Anal 25: 87?C100, 1990a), is applied to the simultaneous evaluation of price and Greeks for the amortized fixed and variable rate mortgage prepayment option. We consider the simplified binomial tree approximation to arbitrary diffusion processes by Costabile and Massabo (J Deriv 17(3): 65?C85, 2010) and analyze its numerical applicability to the mortgage valuation problem for some Vasicek and CIR-like interest rate models. For fixed rates and binomial trees with about thousand steps, we obtain very good results. For the Vasicek model, we also compare the closed-form analytical approximation of the callable fixed rate mortgage price by Xie (IAENG Int J Appl Math 39(1): 9, 2009) with its binomial tree counterpart. With respect to the binomial tree values one observes a systematic underestimation (overestimation) of the callable mortgage price (prepayment option price) analytical approximation. This numerical discrepancy increases at longer maturities and becomes impractical for a valuable estimation of the prepayment option price.     

Housing appreciation, mortgage interest rates, and homeowner mobility

This paper presents a model of the optimal timing of tradeup, which considers consumption and investment motives of homeownership. Households determine the optimal timing of trading up so as to maximize their intertemporal utility of both housing and nonhousing consumption. First we consider current homeowners, who already own a house and expect that they trade up to a more valuable house at some point in the future. Housing appreciation tends to induce an earlier optimal timing of trading up. Moreover, housing appreciation makes current homeowners better off in terms of welfare. However, current homeowners suffer from a rise in mortgage interest rates. Second, we consider first-time home buyers, who have decided to buy a house and expect to trade up to a more valuable house in the future. Their initial housing consumption is determined by an initial downpayment constraint. In this case, the effect of housing appreciation on the optimal timing of trading up is ambiguous and, unlike current homeowners, first-time home buyers suffer from housing appreciation. Moreover, as current homeowners, first-time home buyers suffer from a rise in mortgage interest rates. Most of the theoretical analytic results are ambiguous. Accordingly, we perform numerical simulations based on the theoretical model in order to determine the most likely comparative effects for a stylized set of parameters.As is apparent, the model captures the recent observations on homewner mobility and suggests that macroeconomic variables such as housing appreciation and mortgage interest rates effect the optimal timing of trading up and homeowner's welfare. Nevertheless, the model in this paper has several shortcomings, which should be the subject of future research. First, transaction costs are ignored. If transaction costs are incorporated, the lock-in effect from a rise in mortgage interest rates is well explained. However, the general analysis above is not altered in any essential way. Second, multiple moves are not considered in this model. Therefore, we concentrate on the timing of one tradeup as opposed to the timing and frequency of trading up. In a different vein, it would be interesting to test empirically the importance of the effects of macroeconomic variables on trading up by using microdata.     

A two-stage segment and prediction model for mortgage prepayment prediction and management

Predicting the risk of mortgage prepayments has been the focus of many studies over the past three decades. Most of these works have used single prediction models, such as logistic regressions and survival models, to seek the key influencing factors. From the point of view of customer relationship management (CRM), a two-stage model (i.e., the segment and prediction model) is proposed for analyzing the risk of mortgage prepayment in this research. In the first stage, random forests are used to segment mortgagors into different groups; then, a proportional hazard model is constructed to predict the prepayment time of the mortgagors in the second stage. The results indicate that the two-stage model predicts mortgage prepayment more accurately than the single-stage model (non-segmentation model).     

Time varying risk premia for real estate investment trusts: A GARCH-M model

This study employs the generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic in the mean (GARCH-M) methodology to investigate the return generating process of real estate investment trusts (REIT). The trade-off between excess returns and the conditional variance was positive for both equity and mortgage REITs but it was significant only for the latter. Changes in interest rates and their conditional variance were found to be inversely related to REIT excess returns. The 1986 tax law had a negative impact on the excess returns to both REIT sectors but the coefficient was significant only for mortgage REITs. The GARCH-M specification was determined to be more appropriate for the mortgage REIT portfolio than for the portfolio of equity REITs.