Failure to Refinance
Benjamin Keys,
Devin Pope and
Jaren Pope
No 20401, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
Households that fail to refinance their mortgage when interest rates decline can lose out on substantial savings. Based on a large random sample of outstanding U.S. mortgages in December of 2010, we estimate that approximately 20% of households for whom refinancing would be optimal and who appeared unconstrained to do so, had not taken advantage of the lower rates. We estimate the present-discounted cost to the median household who fails to refinance to be approximately $11,500, making this a particularly large consumer financial mistake. To shed light on possible mechanisms and corroborate our main findings, we also provide results from a mail campaign targeted at a sample of homeowners that could benefit from refinancing.
JEL-codes: D03 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)
Published as Keys, Benjamin J. & Pope, Devin G. & Pope, Jaren C., 2016. "Failure to refinance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 482-499.
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20401.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Failure to refinance (2016) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20401
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20401
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().