"Accounting for Changes in the Homeownership Rate"

Abstract

After years of being relatively constant, the homeownership rate -a target for housing policy- has increased since 1995. This paper attempts to understand why the homeownership rate has been increasing by constructing a quantitative model and then using this model to evaluate explanations that have been offered to account for this increase. We find that the increase in the homeownership can be explained by innovations in the mortgage market that allows households to take a positive housing investment position with a much smaller downpayment.