Dallas Fed Economics
Bubble thought: What beliefs can reveal about housing market risks
Survey-based forecast data on home price growth are a surer indicator of housing market exuberance than traditional valuation ratios, such as price-to-income or price-to-rent.
September 02, 2025
Dallas Fed Economics
Falling rates no assurance of homeowner refinancing binge
When the Fed lowers its benchmark policy rate, the reduction is usually reflected in a variety of consumer finance rates, notably mortgages. However, there are reasons to believe that such a reduction might not prompt an increase in the volume of mortgage refinances and prepayment activity as has historically occurred.
August 14, 2025
Working Paper
Bubbling Up? What Consumer Expectations Reveal About U.S. Housing Market Exuberance
This paper investigates the presence of speculative bubbles in the U.S. housing market after the global financial crisis. Unlike standard approaches that rely on observed economic fundamentals, the method used in this paper leverages subjective price expectations from the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers to test for exuberance without imposing a specific model of intrinsic housing values.
May 21, 2025
Working Paper
Household Finance Shapes Political Participation: Evidence from Mortgage Refinancing
Using quasi-experimental variation from movements in mortgage rates and eligibility cutoffs in HARP, this paper shows that borrowers who refinanced between 2009 and 2012 were more likely to vote in the 2012 general election than otherwise similar borrowers who did not refinance.
May 12, 2025
Dallas Fed Economics
Decline in bank stress likely to continue as interest rates normalize
While the key measures suggest that conditions that hamper a bank’s resilience to economic adversity are marginally higher than before the pandemic in 2019, we expect further declines in bank stress levels as interest rates normalize.
March 04, 2025
Dallas Fed Economics
Evidence suggests U.S. house price/rent ratio, real home prices to decline
The ratio of house prices to rents in the U.S. has risen 20 percent since first quarter 2020, coinciding with the beginning of the pandemic. The ratio is near its previous high in 2006. The future course of inflation may well be influenced by how this now-lofty ratio reverts to a more usual level.
February 25, 2025
Working Paper
Automated Underwriting and Housing Market Dynamics
This paper studies how the 1990s adoption of now widely-used automated mortgage underwriting systems affected credit supply, house prices and their comovement across locations.
January 17, 2025
Dallas Fed Economics
Rents, home values depressed in air pollution hotspots
Wildfire smoke pollution may significantly affect housing market activity in locations hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the fires.
August 27, 2024
Dallas Fed Economics
How the U.S. might outgrow pandemic-era housing (un)affordability problems
A review of market-based and private forecasters’ expectations suggests that U.S. housing may be at an inflection point. U.S. income growth and, more broadly, the robust U.S. labor market will likely help wring out pandemic-era excesses that led to rapidly deteriorating affordability.
August 13, 2024
Dallas Fed Economics
Persistence of house-price growth highlights geographic, credit factors
Growth in house prices is highly persistent and therefore more predictable than that of other assets, such as stocks.
May 28, 2024