Home Ownership, Household Leverage and Hyperbolic Discounting

Andra Ghent

Real Estate Economics, 2015, vol. 43, issue 3, 750-781

Abstract: type="main">

I examine tenure and mortgage choice in an equilibrium model in which households make decisions as if they discount hyperbolically rather than exponentially. Overall, hyperbolic discounting does not seem to explain the high rates of home ownership or portfolio concentration in housing in the data. I then study the choice between mortgages that require a substantial down payment and mortgages that require no down payment. Allowing households access to no-down-payment mortgages exacerbates rather than mitigates the undersaving of hyperbolic discounters. However, even when households discount hyperbolically, welfare is higher when households have access to no-down-payment mortgages.

Date: 2015
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