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AbstractSuccessive waves of house price appreciation have prompted homeowners to tap into housing wealth, increasing mortgage debt to meet spending needs. This paper addresses three questions about equity borrowing behaviour via panel-data modelling. First, how do homeowners’ asset and debt portfolios affect equity borrowing behaviour? Second, is equity borrowing influenced by financial behaviours relating to saving, planning and risk-taking? Third, do equity borrowing drivers vary by age? Our findings confirm that equity borrowing is generally influenced by asset and debt portfolios, with notable age-related differences. Younger homeowners exhibit greater sensitivity to changes in primary home value and debt, and risk willingness. Income, labour force status and ownership of other property are crucial for those aged 55–64, while homeowners aged 65+ are generally insensitive to asset, debt or income changes. We discuss policy implications, emphasizing the prospects of longer working lives among pre-retirees, the need for safeguards for elderly equity-borrowers, and the welfare consequences of later-life debt burdens or homeownership loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of debt-leveraged homeownership in Anglo-capitalist economies – including the US, UK, and Australia – has created powerful stratifying effects, which prevailing critical Marxist and asset-based stratification accounts assert are reconfiguring class inequalities. While the Marxist account contends that altered class relations are centred on bifurcations between creditors and debtors, the asset-based one constructs typologies of differing relationships to asset ownership. This paper challenges this for insufficiently acknowledging the role of classificatory credit scoring systems within credit markets in unequally shaping access to debt and subsequently, housing; and the interest-bearing consequences. Drawing on a qualitative case study of 28 interviews with 'mortgage prisoners', existing borrowers unable to remortgage even if up to date with payments, and proceeding in close conversation with Fourcade and Healy's notion of 'classification situations', I examine how mortgage prisoners' credit score situation impacts their capacity to (re)access debt-leveraged housing. The results demonstrate: mortgage prisoners' credit score situation dominates their experience of homeownership; many are hyperaware of their credit score and internalise its moralistic valuation; and some are resigned to or defeated by its apparent impermeability. Examining the mortgage prisoners' case enhances critical Marxist and asset-based accounts by highlighting the complexity of financialised housing systems and how it impacts stratification and life chances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the role of monetary policy for the dynamics of US mortgage debt, which accounts for the largest part of household debt. A time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (VAR) model allows us to study the variation in the sensitivity of mortgage debt to monetary policy. We find that an identically sized policy shock became less effective over time. We use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to show that a fall in the share of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) can replicate this finding. Calibrating the model to the drop in the ARM share since the 1980s yields a decline in the sensitivity of housing debt to monetary policy which is quantitatively similar to the VAR results. A sacrifice ratio for mortgage debt reveals that a policy tightening directed toward reducing household debt became more expensive in terms of a loss in employment. Counterfactuals show that this result cannot be attributed to changes in monetary policy itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mortgage debt is financially burdensome for many older homeowners in the United States. As people age, declining health can bring about increased healthcare costs. Focusing on homeowners aged 50 and older in the U.S., we investigate two research questions: (1) To what extent does a heath shock affect the likelihood of paying off a mortgage voluntarily or involuntarily? and (2) how long does a health shock delay the time it takes to pay off a mortgage? We used eight biannual waves (2004–2018) of the Health and Retirement Study containing 11,772 borrowers to build survival regression models. Results showed that a health shock reduced the likelihood of voluntary payoff by 12%, while it increased the probability of involuntary payoff by 18%. A health shock delayed voluntary and involuntary payoffs for 30 and 21 months, respectively. We discuss tax deduction and HELOCs as strategies to reduce older homeowners' mortgage strain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with Czech household mortgage debt and its determinants in the period 1Q2005–2Q2021. Our analysis focuses on the variables determining the level of mortgage debt from both short- and long-term perspectives. Our contribution is two-fold. Firstly, we examine the relationship between the selected variables within a cross-correlation analysis. The results confirm the positive dependency of household mortgage debt and real GDP, real gross average income and the level of house prices. By contrast, a negative relationship was identified for real interest rates, the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Secondly, we explore the ARDL and EC models and identify one cointegration relationship. Our results confirm that house prices and real wages are determinants of household mortgage debt in the long-term perspective. However, a wider range of variables plays a role in the short run, including house prices, real gross average income, inflation and long-term interest rates. Moreover, our model indicates the insignificance of unemployment in both the short and long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides the scholarly rationale for the proposed Armidale Food School (AFS) in terms of investigating care’s role in the future of learning. We use Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s influential study of care and environment to ground the analysis. Puig (2017) argues that undoing the ecological and social harms of the agri-food system requires time to tend to plants and soil in different and slower ways. We argue that making time for these ideal forms of ecological care is difficult in the new ‘asset’ economy. Time is used up working in office jobs to service increasing financial burdens of education and mortgage debt. Grounded in traditions of radical and anti)colonial pedagogy and postcapitalist politics, AFS teaches students to think in expansive, critical, and practical ways about the barriers to these ideal forms of care while seeding changes in social practice in relation to the food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political and economic reforms to open and liberalize Mexico's economy drove federal administrations to promote mortgage expansion and mass housing production at an unprecedented pace since around the turn of the millennium. This allowed a select group of housing development companies to grow considerably through the construction and sale of homes for lower-middle income households. The country's housing finance and development model was eventually rendered unsustainable given onerous mortgage terms for households, substandard housing production in remote locations, leverage issues and speculative practices on the part of developers. Subsequent administrations modified their approach to managing, promoting, and restricting housing finance and production, highlighting the influence of political actors and regimes in addressing the tensions between economic pressures and social concerns. Shifting sociopolitical dynamics have continued to transform housing finance policy agendas. While the reach and implications of recent changes have not fully materialized, this paper highlights the fluctuating and unstable nature of housing finance and its contingency on the different political and ideological inclinations of national (and subnational) governments – and the push of their constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the life cycle model of consumption and saving, homeownership is an important vehicle for horizontal redistribution. Households accumulate wealth in owner-occupied housing during working lives before benefiting from imputed rent streams in retirement. But in some countries housing wealth's welfare role has broadened as owners increasingly use flexible mortgages to smooth consumption during working lives. One consequence is higher outstanding mortgages later in life, a burden exacerbated by high real house prices that compel home buyers to demand mortgages that are a growing multiple of their incomes. We investigate whether these developments are prompting longer working lives, an idea that is especially relevant in countries offering relatively low government pensions. Australia is one such country. We use the 2001–2017 panels of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to estimate hazard models of exits from the Australian labour force as workers approach pensionable age. We find that those with high outstanding mortgage debts are more likely to postpone retirement, as are those with relatively low amounts of private pension wealth. These results are stronger in urban housing markets, and especially among males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of home ownership on household stockholdings using Japanese microdata. To disentangle the effect of property value and mortgage debt on households' stockholdings as a share of financial assets, we use current and time‐of‐purchase house price indices as instruments. Our estimates suggest that an exogenous increase in property value is associated with an increase in stockholdings, while an increase in mortgage debt is associated with a decrease. We also find that a simultaneous increase in property value and mortgage debt has no effect on stockholdings but is associated with an increase in mortgage debt repayment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Ecuador's worst economic downturn in 1999, women left the country in the thousands. They migrated for economic reasons but also hoping to distance themselves from gendered duties and obligations that confined them to oppressive feminine roles. Less than a decade later they bought into Spain's housing bubble in an effort to 'make up' for their departure. I argue that Ecuadorian migrant women's decisions to buy mortgaged homes in Barcelona were in part informed by their conceptualizations of domesticity, care giving, and motherhood. For women portrayed as culpables or 'culprits' for leaving Ecuador and failing to upkeep their caregiving responsibilities in their country of origin, the promise of homeownership became a way of accomplishing complex forms of transnational caregiving as well as upward mobility. This article focuses on gendered conceptualizations of care, motherhood, and kinship amongst Ecuadorian migrant women and the relationship these notions have with housing financialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated the link between financial literacy and household mortgage decisions. To this end, the longitudinal data set for the U.S. population from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) was used. Evidence for links between financial literacy levels and (1) mortgage uptake, (2) mortgage interest rates and (3) mortgage refinancing decisions were examined using the two waves (2015 and 2017) of PSID data, combined with the 2016 PSID supplementary questionnaire examining the measured financial literacy of household members. Our results revealed a positive link between financial literacy and mortgage possession and, additionally, between financial literacy and the subsequent decision to take out a mortgage. Moreover, higher financial literacy scores were associated with lower mortgage interests and a greater likelihood of mortgage refinancing. On average, a household that refinanced its mortgage was able to reduce its interest rate by almost 0.7 percentage points, providing evidence of the positive role of financial literacy in securing better mortgage terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we merge the literature on homeownership regimes, which focuses to a lesser extent on the consequences of wealth and social inequality, with the literature on wealth and social stratification, which overlooks the importance of homeownership regimes in contributing to those inequalities. Within this framework, we examine to what extent homeownership regimes shape class inequality in homeownership among young adults and the mortgage debt burden that usually accompanies it. We first develop an updated typology of homeownership regimes that incorporates the role of the family via intergenerational wealth transfers (IWT) such as gifts and housing assets. This dimension was theoretically underdeveloped and empirically absent from previous homeownership typologies. Second, we employ this typology to investigate class-based gaps in homeownership and mortgage debt burden within and between homeownership regimes. This is done by pooling data for a total of 20 countries from two sources: the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2013–2014 (EuroStat) for EU countries, and the Household Expenditure Survey 2012–2013 (CBS) for Israel. Using multivariate modeling, we find that homeownership regimes in which IWT in the form of financial support is common practice increase class inequality in homeownership compared to regimes in which IWT of assets is common practice. Contrary to the literature suggesting that liberal mortgage markets advance inclusion, it appears that in the homeownership regime characterized by the most liberal housing finance system (which includes Northern European countries and the Netherlands), class inequality in mortgaged homeownership is the widest but class inequality in mortgage debt burden is the narrowest. Homeownership regimes characterized by IWT of assets (which include Southern and Central Eastern European countries) reveal the opposite patterns. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on homeownership regimes and wealth inequality, with a specific focus on young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owning a home has the potential to provide older adults with higher levels of financial security, housing stability, and housing quality. Given that a large majority of older adults own their homes, whether and for whom these benefits are realized is an important question for policy makers: how can they craft interventions to make positive outcomes more likely? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Reverse mortgages allow adults aged 62 years and older to borrow against the equity in their homes without incurring monthly loan repayments. This study examines the relationship of reverse mortgage borrowing with older adults' satisfaction with their financial situation, housing, health, and daily life/leisure as well as with life as a whole. Method A new national data set of 1,088 older adults, comprised of loan data, credit histories, and responses to a phone survey, was created. Our estimation strategy compares reverse mortgage borrowers to older adults who obtained mandatory counseling but not a reverse mortgage. Results Reverse mortgage borrowers have significantly higher financial and housing satisfaction compared to nonborrowers; no differences were found for health, daily life/leisure, and general satisfaction. These satisfaction domains contribute differently to general satisfaction for reverse mortgage borrowers relative to nonborrowers: housing satisfaction has a greater influence for borrowers and health a greater influence for nonborrowers. Discussion Our study provides new knowledge about the longer-term outcomes of reverse mortgage borrowers. The positive association of reverse mortgage borrowing for housing and financial satisfaction and, in turn, general satisfaction, provides insights regarding borrower experiences with this controversial financial tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between household mortgage debt and mortgage interest rate and salary in Bulgaria. The monthly data in this research paper is from January 2007 to June 2020, from existing official sources - NSI (National Statistical Institute) and BNB (Bulgarian National Bank). The chosen initial period is related to the beginning of the Monetary Board and the macroeconomic stability of the country after the Board. The research methodology includes correlation, regression analysis and related tests of statistical hypotheses. Based on the results, we derive the estimated regression equation that can be used to explain the impact of changes in independent variables on the dependent variable and to make predictions. We found that mortgage debt is positively associated with salary and negatively associated with mortgage interest rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scandinavian countries are known for their universalistic welfare states, corporatist coordination, strong economic performances and egalitarian outcomes, an institutional combination often referred to as the 'Nordic model'. However, these countries also possess volatile and increasingly vulnerable housing markets characterised by periods of sharp increases in prices and rents and some of the highest debt to income ratios in the world. The combination of a universalistic welfare state and housing market dynamics sets off a self-reinforcing process of increased stratification and re-familialisation. How did these orderly, egalitarian and welfare-oriented societies end up with housing markets that expose their citizens to increasing risk while driving inequality? The key lies in the effect the Nordic welfare state has on financialised housing markets. Successful decommodification of human lives leads to generalised creditworthiness which stimulates asset price inflation and new wealth and risk inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article progresses understandings of contemporary middle-class housing aspirations and the socialization of these within families. It examines Australian middle-class homeowners' dispositions towards mortgage debt, using qualitative Bourdieusian analytics. By avoiding the common reduction of housing aspirations to tenure preferences, it foregrounds diverse orientations towards home-buying that suggest cultural forms of middle-class heterogeneity in the housing field. It then identifies how within-family socialization conditions these differing orientations, including through parental guidance and observational learning. This "immaterial inheritance" variously promotes and deters property speculation, for instance by imparting competence (e.g. housing literacy) and confidence to invest, and thus begins to shed light on the under-explored cultural dimensions of class in intensifying housing commodification. Sharper understandings of the trajectories of cultural capitals over time (and their interaction with trajectories of economic capitals), hold promise for explaining how these calibrate the way intergenerational transfers shape inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mortgage debt, Mortgagors, Mortgage stress, Repayment risk, Investment risk, Wellbeing, Consumption, Superannuation, Housing assistance. [Extracted from the article]

Geographers have started studying residential (housing) and commercial real estate (offices, retail, leisure) at the intersection of financial and urban geographies to understand how the built environment – chunky and spatially fixed – has been turned into a (quasi-)financial asset – 'unitized' and liquid – through a range of regulatory and socio-technical changes and constructions. The financialization of real estate is not limited to the rise in household debt, mortgage securitization and international investment in office markets, but increasingly also affects rental housing: private equity, hedge funds and REITs buy up large portfolios of social and private rented housing, while housing associations use derivatives and other financial instruments. This report surveys the most recent research on finance, real estate and housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the determinants of household debt composition in Malaysia. By utilizing the bound test and Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) modelling approach, findings of this study reveals that in the long run period, a change in income level, housing price and population would have a positive impact on mortgage debt while rise in interest rates and cost of living would exert a negative influence. In addition, findings of this study supported that the household uses the debt as a substitute for income to finance the rising consumption as a result of a higher living cost. Findings of this study could provide some guidance to policymakers in controlling the mounting debt level and help in realizing the nation economic goals.

This article examines the impact of internal variables of the financial system (FS) regarding the economic inequality in Colombia during the 1993 through the 2010 period. It begins with the integration of two perspectives about the inequality induced by financial debts and the social responsibility of the FS. This investigation was done with an auto-regressive and distributed backwardness model, and a Granger Test. The results indicate that the economic inequality grows if the mortgage debt, the real estate dations as payment of debts, and the banking asset interest rates grow. Likewise, if the price of low status housing decreases, the economic inequality increases.

The private saving rate in Turkey has decreased substantially since 2000. In this study, we investigate the determinants of the private saving rate in Turkey, with a special focus on the role of mortgage debt. We find a strong and robust negative effect of mortgage credit growth on private saving rate. Non-mortgage consumer credit growth also has a negative and robust effect on private saving rate, though its effect is smaller than that of mortgage credit. Business credit growth, on the other hand, has a positive impact on private saving rate. Our results provide strong support for the argument that the high growth rate of consumer credit is a primary reason for the recent decrease in private saving rate in Turkey. We also find that private saving rate displays strong persistence, and public saving rate partially crowds out private saving rate. In addition, per capita real income growth rate and macroeconomic uncertainty have positive impact on private saving rate.

We use a quantitative asset pricing model to "reverse‐engineer" the sequences of shocks to housing demand and lending standards needed to replicate the boom–bust patterns in U.S. housing value and mortgage debt from 1993 to 2015. Conditional on the observed paths for U.S. real consumption growth, the real mortgage interest rate, and the supply of residential fixed assets, a specification with random walk expectations outperforms one with rational expectations in plausibly matching the patterns in the data. Counterfactual simulations show that shocks to housing demand, housing supply, and lending standards were important, but movements in the mortgage interest rate were not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has emphasized the negative effects of finance on macroeconomic performance and even cautioned of a “finance curse.” As one of the main drivers of financial sector growth, mortgages have traditionally been hailed as increasing the number of homeowners in a country. This article uses long-run panel data for seventeen countries between 1920 (1950) and 2013 to show that the effect of the “great mortgaging” on homeownership rates is not universally positive. Increasing mortgage debt appears to be neither necessary nor sufficient for higher homeownership levels. There were periods of rising homeownership levels without much increase in mortgages before 1980, thanks to government programs, purchasing power increases, and less inflated house prices. There have also been mortgage increases without homeownership growth, but with house price bubbles thereafter. The liberalization of financial markets might after all be a poor substitute for more traditional housing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]