Foreclosure,vacancy and crime

This paper examines the impact of residential foreclosures and vacancies on violent and property crime. To overcome confounding factors, a difference-in-difference research design is applied to a unique data set containing geocoded foreclosure and crime data from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Results indicate that while foreclosure alone has no effect on crime, violent crime rates increase by roughly 19% once the foreclosed home becomes vacant – an effect that increases with length of vacancy. We find weak evidence suggesting a potential vacancy effect for property crime that is much lower in magnitude.     

The contagion effect of foreclosed properties

Although previous research shows that prices of homes in neighborhoods with foreclosures are lower than those in neighborhoods without foreclosures, it remains unclear whether the lower prices are the result of a general decline in neighborhood values or whether foreclosures reduce the prices of nearby non-distressed sales through a contagion effect. We provide robust evidence of a contagion discount by simultaneously estimating the local price trend and the incremental price impact of nearby foreclosures. At its peak, the discount is roughly 1% per nearby foreclosed property. The discount diminishes rapidly as the distance to the distressed property increases. The contagion discount grows from the onset of distress through the foreclosure sale and then stabilizes. This pattern is consistent with the contagion effect being the visual externality associated with deferred maintenance and neglect.     

Housing submarkets and the impacts of foreclosures on property prices

The dramatic rise in the number of foreclosed properties since 2006 has come to assume the proportions of a national crisis. It is widely acknowledged that foreclosures hurt neighborhoods by devaluing the nearby properties through various channels. This paper offers a new way of conceptualizing and then estimating the potential effects of foreclosures on property values. Housing stock heterogeneity in the central city old neighborhood allows for the possibility that the impacts of nearby foreclosures may differ across types of housing. This study uses a dataset that covers twenty years of housing values from the City of Worcester (MA), and finds evidence that foreclosures of multi-family houses in close proximity influence the sales price of surrounding single-family properties after controlling for impact from foreclosure of nearby single-family houses. The most preferred estimate suggests that each multi-family foreclosure that occurs between 660 and 1320 feet away from the sale lowers the predicted sales price by approximately 3%. Nearby multi-family spillover impacts also persist over time. In addition, a new approach advocating for an alternative definition of housing submarket suggests that a distant foreclosure within the same submarket also lower sales price of a single-family home by 0.1%.     

Neighborhood effects of concentrated mortgage foreclosures

As the national mortgage crisis has worsened, an increasing number of communities are facing declining housing prices and high rates of foreclosure. Central to the call for government intervention in this crisis is the claim that foreclosures not only hurt those who are losing their homes to foreclosure, but also harm neighbors by reducing the value of nearby properties and in turn, reducing local governments’ tax bases. The extent to which foreclosures do in fact drive down neighboring property values has become a crucial question for policy-makers. In this paper, we use a unique dataset on property sales and foreclosure filings in New York City from 2000 to 2005 to identify the effects of foreclosure starts on housing prices in the surrounding neighborhood. Regression results suggest that above some threshold, proximity to properties in foreclosure is associated with lower sales prices. The magnitude of the price discount increases with the number of properties in foreclosure, but not in a linear relationship.     

When does delinquency result in neglect? Mortgage distress and property maintenance

Numerous studies have found that foreclosed properties sell at a discount and push down the sale prices of nearby properties, which may be partly driven by poorer maintenance of the foreclosed homes. However, direct evidence of foreclosure-related property neglect has been scarce. This paper uses data on constituent complaints and requests for public services made to the City of Boston to examine the incidence and timing of this type of foreclosure externality. Interior and exterior property conditions appear to suffer most while homes are bank owned, although complaints about reduced maintenance are also common earlier in the foreclosure process.     

The lasting effects of crime: The relationship of discovered methamphetamine laboratories and home values

This study estimates a household's willingness to pay to avoid the stigma of crime while minimizing concerns of omitted variable bias. By assuming methamphetamine producers locate approximately at random within a narrowly defined neighborhood, this study is able to use hedonic estimation methods to estimate the impact of the discovery of a methamphetamine laboratory on the home values near that location. Specifically, the analysis designates those closest to the site as the treated, while those slightly farther away act as the comparison group. The discovery of a methamphetamine laboratory has a significant effect on the property values of those homes close to the location that peaks from 6 to 12 months after each lab's discovery. The estimates found in this study range from a decrease in sale prices of 10% to 19% in the year following a laboratory's discovery compared to the prices for homes that are farther away but still in the same neighborhood.     

Do foreclosures cause crime?

The mortgage foreclosure crisis has generated increasing concerns about the effects of foreclosed properties on their surrounding neighborhoods, and on criminal activity in particular. There are a number of potential ways in which a foreclosed property might increase the payoffs to committing crime and decrease the likelihood of being caught, including reduced maintenance, residential turnover, and vacancy. Using point-specific, longitudinal crime, foreclosure, and other property data from New York City, this paper determines whether foreclosed properties affect criminal activity on the surrounding blockface – an individual street segment including properties on both sides of the street. We find that additional foreclosures on a blockface lead to additional total crimes, violent crimes and public order crimes. These effects appear to be largest when foreclosure activity is measured by the number of foreclosed properties that are on their way to an auction or have reverted to bank ownership. We find that effects are largest in neighborhoods with moderate or high levels of crime, and on blockfaces with concentrated foreclosure activity.     

Hedonic versus repeat-sales housing price indexes for measuring the recent boom-bust cycle

Standard housing price indexes rely on strong constant-quality assumptions and often conflict. Hedonic price indexes overcome limitations of median price and repeat-sales indexes but their implementation has been limited by a lack of data. This paper constructs hedonic indexes at the zip code level for the Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan areas using considerably more detailed data than previously available. Our sample was collected by a mortgage technology firm, and consists of almost 1.1 million transactions during the boom-bust cycle since 2000. Our hedonic regressions include new spatial models that capture correlations within submarkets (using zip codes as proxies) and allow temporal asymmetry. Compared to a repeat-sales price index constructed from the same data, the hedonic indexes indicate that the market peaked about 11 months later in Los Angeles and about 2 months earlier in San Diego, show less pre-peak appreciation and post-peak depreciation in low-tier housing and more pre-peak appreciation in high-tier housing. We also find that the intensity of the cycle varies greatly across zip codes and price-tiers in a pattern consistent with foreclosure activity.     

Property taxes and home prices: A tale of two cities

We explore the influence of property taxes on home prices, taking advantage of a policy experiment of property taxation in Shanghai and in Chongqing starting from January 2011. Using the approach suggested by Hsiao, Ching and Wan (2012) we estimate hypothetical home prices in the absence of property taxation for Shanghai and Chongqing using home prices in other cities and provinces. We show that the OLS generates consistent estimators when the price series are non-stationary I(1) processes. We apply the model to a panel of average home prices of 31 cities and provinces in China, and find the property-tax experiment lowered the Shanghai average home price by 11%–15% but raised the Chongqing average home prices by 10%–12%. An examination of the policy details and data on prices by home types suggests the post-treatment price increase in Chongqing can be driven by a spillover effect from high-end to low-end properties.     

Renter Mobility and Multifamily Mortgage Default Risk

Renter mobility is a major concern for the performance of multifamily mortgages. If enough new renters are not found to replace those that move, vacancy rates can quickly escalate to where cash flows are negative and property mortgages are in jeopardy. In this study we examine how differences in renter mobility patterns by property type can affect mortgage credit risk within submarkets of an MSA. We expand the default model developed by Goldberg and Capone (2000) to use unique distributions of rental unit turnover and vacancy durations for large and small multifamily rental properties. Monte Carlo simulations then show how credit risk on multifamily mortgages is affected if owners of small properties are able to keep tenants longer than owners of larger properties can. The model can be used to explore other potential intra-MSA differences in property market dynamics.     

An empirical study on credit card loan delinquency

Following the Basel II convention, consumer credit default is commonly defined as delinquency beyond a period of 90 days. In this study, rather than considering default as a binary variable, we dissect delinquency states further to investigate default behavior in greater detail. As such, we define three states—no delinquency, delinquency and serious delinquency—and estimate the probabilities of the transitions between states using extensive panel data from Korea, covering a wide range of behavioral information. Our findings have several economic implications. First, the factors that affect delinquency risk can differ from those that affect the transition from delinquency to serious delinquency. Second, the recent increase in the number of seriously delinquent accounts can be attributed to changes in the borrower age distribution. Third, macroeconomic conditions, especially differences in gross domestic product and consumption growth, have led to the recent increase in delinquent accounts. Fourth, the debt-to-income (DTI) ratio has a profound effect on transitions between delinquency states and thus affects both recovery and delinquency. Furthermore, this result is robust to controls for demographic and macroeconomic factors.     

Project financing,entrepreneurial activity,and investment in the presence of asymmetric information

We analyze a two-period signaling model in which a representative entrepreneur in a regional economy has a project that generates a random cash flow and that requires investment that the entrepreneur raises from a competitive market. The project's type is known to the entrepreneur but not to the investors. Further, the entrepreneur is restricted to issuing debt only or equity only. We first show that there is no separating perfect Bayesian equilibrium (PBE) contract involving the issuance of equity only, that there exists a pooling PBE contract involving the issuance of equity only, and that a debt contract is preferred to an equity contract by our entrepreneur. Next, we suppose that the entrepreneur incurs a non-pecuniary cost of financial distress F > 0 whenever he is unable to make a repayment at time t = 1. We provide conditions on F under which a pooling PBE contract with debt exists and a separating PBE contract with debt and equity exists. Finally, we examine whether a high type entrepreneur will prefer a setting with a cost of financial distress (F > 0) or a setting in which there is no such cost (F = 0).     

Minimum wages,wages and employment in various sectors in Honduras

This paper contributes to our understanding of the impact of minimum wages on labor markets of developing countries, where there are often multiple minimum wages and compliance is weak. We examine how changes in more than 22 minimum wages over 1990–2004 affect employment, unemployment and average wages of workers in different sectors, defined by coverage under the legislation. The evidence suggests that minimum wages are effectively enforced only in medium and large-scale firms, where a 1% increase in the minimum wage leads to an increase of 0.29% in the average wage and a relatively large reduction in employment of ? 0.46%. We find that public sector wages emulate minimum wage trends but the higher cost of labor does not reduce employment there. There are no discernable effects of minimum wages on the wages of workers in small-firms or the self-employed; yet, higher minimum wages may create more unemployment. We conclude that (even under our upper bound estimate of the effect on the wages of workers) the total earnings of workers in the large-firm covered sector fall with higher minimum wages in Honduras, which warrants a policy dialogue on the structure and level of minimum wages.     

Property value impacts of foreclosed housing acquisitions under uncertainty

Community development corporations seek to stabilize neighborhoods affected by the recent foreclosure crisis through acquisition and redevelopment of distressed properties. One rationale for this work is the alleviation or avoidance of negative foreclosure impacts. We estimate the lost value to proximate properties associated with a single foreclosure through a Markov chain representing probabilistic transitions between foreclosure stages. We apply our model to a case study of foreclosure properties in Chelsea, MA. A rank ordering by estimated property value impacts indicates significant potential gains in social value as compared to current community development practice. We extend our basic model to address the effects of clusters of foreclosed units upon the value of proximate properties. This study provides additional support for the use of decision modeling in foreclosed housing acquisition and redevelopment.     

An analysis of default risk in the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program

While reverse mortgages are intended as a tool to enable financial security for older homeowners, in 2014, nearly 12 percent of reverse mortgage borrowers in the federally insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program were in default on their property taxes or homeowners insurance. Unlike the traditional mortgage market, there were no risk-based underwriting guidelines for HECMs through 2014. In response to the relatively high default rate, a variety of policy responses were implemented, including establishing underwriting guidelines. However, there is a lack of data and analysis to inform such criteria. Our analysis follows 30,000 seniors counseled for reverse mortgages between 2006 and 2011. The data includes comprehensive financial and credit report attributes, not typically available in analyses of reverse mortgage borrowers. Using a bivariate probit model that accounts for selection, we estimate the likelihood of tax and insurance default. Financial characteristics that increase default risk include the percentage of funds withdrawn in the first month of the loan, a lower credit score, higher property tax to income ratio, low or no unused revolving credit, and a history of being past due on mortgage payments or having a tax lien on the property. Our estimate of the elasticity of default with respect to credit scores is similar to that for closed-end home equity loans, but higher than that for HELOCs. We simulate the effects of alternative underwriting criteria and policy changes on the probability of take-up and default. Reductions in the default rate with a minimal effect on participation can be achieved by requiring that participants with low credit scores set aside some of their HECM funds for future property tax and insurance payments, a form of escrowing.     

The local impact of typhoons on economic activity in China: A view from outer space

We examine the impact of typhoons on local economic activity in coastal China. To capture potential damages from an individual typhoon we use historical typhoon track data in conjunction with a detailed wind-field model. We then combine our damage proxy with satellite derived nightlight intensity data to construct a panel data set that allows us to estimate the impact of typhoons at a spatially highly disaggregated level (approx. 1 km). Our results show that typhoons have a negative and significant, but short-term, impact on local activity – a typhoon that is estimated to destroy 50% of the property reduces local economic activity by 20% for that year. Over our period of analysis (1992–2010) total net economic losses are estimated to be in the region of $US 28.34 billion. To assess the damage risk from future typhoons we use simulated probability distributions of typhoon occurrence and intensity and combine these with our estimated effects. Results suggest that expected annual losses are likely to be around $US 0.54 billion.     

The effect of property taxes on vacation home growth rates: Evidence from Michigan

The Tiebout model assumes that individuals sort to the jurisdiction which best matches their fiscal preferences. However, there is a paucity of reliable estimates for the impact of tax changes on household mobility. We utilize a state mandated school finance reform and temporal differences in vacation home densities to provide a unique test of this fundamental Tiebout assumption. The results show that changes in property taxes explain a significant amount of the variation in vacation home growth; a 3–4 mil decrease in property tax rates is associated with an increase of approximately one vacation home per square kilometer.     

The spillover effects of infill developments on local housing prices

This paper examines the spillover effects of infill developments, which involve developing vacant or under-used parcels within existing urban areas that are largely developed, on local housing prices. Employing a difference-in-difference specification on a sample of 275 new developments and 55,887 sale transactions of houses in Singapore, we find that infill developments have a positive and persistent impact on local housing prices. The contagion effect is larger for infill developments that are built on teardown sites. The spillover effect can also be traced to the overpricing of new homes by developers. Overall, the evidence indicates that developers act as price leaders and contribute significantly to price discovery in the local housing market.     

Foreclosure externalities: New evidence

Policy makers have used externalities to justify government intervention in the foreclosure process. Using a new dataset that covers 15 of the largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. and a novel identification strategy, this paper provides new evidence on the size and source of these externalities. Our results show that a property in distress affects the value of neighboring properties from the time when the borrower becomes seriously delinquent on the mortgage until well after the bank sells the property to a new owner. Properties with seriously delinquent loans within 0.1 miles are found to decrease transaction prices of non-distressed properties by approximately one percent on average. The spillovers are found to dissipate rapidly with distance and completely disappear one year after the bank sells the property to a new homeowner. Importantly, we find that the size of the externality is sensitive to the condition of foreclosed properties, as bank-owned properties in poor condition lower nearby transaction prices by 2.6% on average while those in good condition marginally raise prices. We argue that the measured price spillovers are physical externalities caused by a lack of property maintenance and not pecuniary externalities that reflect local supply or demand shocks.     

The development of delinquency during adolescence: a comparison of missing data techniques

Conclusions on the development of delinquent behaviour during the life-course can only be made with longitudinal data, which is regularly gained by repeated interviews of the same respondents. Missing data are a problem for the analysis of delinquent behaviour during the life-course shown with data from an adolescents’ four-wave panel. In this article two alternative techniques to cope with missing data are used: full information maximum likelihood estimation and multiple imputation. Both methods allow one to consider all available data (including adolescents with missing information on some variables) in order to estimate the development of delinquency. We demonstrate that self-reported delinquency is systematically underestimated with listwise deletion (LD) of missing data. Further, LD results in false conclusions on gender and school specific differences of the age–crime relationship. In the final discussion some hints are given for further methods to deal with bias in panel data affected by the missing process.