Latest Cityscape Features Research Using New Mortgage Borrower Dataset

The latest issue of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research features a symposium presenting original research using the National Survey of Mortgage Originations (NSMO).

Guest editors Robert B. Avery and Ron Borzekowski provide an overview of the NSMO and introduce the four thematic articles in this issue. After reviewing the history of the NSMO and describing the informational gap the survey was created to fill, the editors contextualize each of the articles in relation to their authors’ use of NSMO data in enriching researchers’ and policymakers’ understanding of borrower behavior in the U.S. housing market.

Tim Critchfield, Jaya Dey, Nuno Mota, and Saty Patrabansh compare the experiences of mortgage holders from rural counties to those from more urban areas. The authors conclude that rural borrowers paid higher interest rates and were less satisfied with their mortgages than urban borrowers, and tend to be less knowledgeable or confident about the terms of their mortgages than their urban counterparts.

Chad Redmer examines demographic correlates to levels of knowledge about changes in local housing prices. Redmer finds that first-time buyers are more attuned to recent and impending pricing trends than those who have purchased a house in the past, and that lower-income borrowers or borrowers with less education are less knowledgeable than higher-income or more highly educated borrowers.

Robert B. Argento, Lariece M. Brown, Sergei Koulayev, Grace Li, Marina Myhre, Forrest Pafenberg, and Saty Patrabansh investigate the impact of homebuyer education and counseling (HEC) programs using metrics other than mortgage performance. They also evaluate HEC programs generally, finding that program participants report better knowledge, confidence, and satisfaction concerning their mortgages.

Brian Bucks, Tim Critchfield, and Susan Singer study whether a switch in 2015 from one legally mandated informational packet on real estate settlement services and related costs given to borrowers to another increased homebuyer recollection of having received such information at all, finding that the change resulted in a statistically significant increase in recollection.

In addition to the symposium, the issue features two refereed papers: Robynn Cox, Benjamin Henwood, Seva Rodnyansky, Eric Rice, and Suzanne Wenzel survey existing literature on housing insecurity and advance an operational definition of the term, and Agustín Indaco, Francesc Ortega, and Süleyman Tas¸pınar analyze the role of flood insurance in the housing markets of coastal areas.

Articles in this issue’s regularly appearing departments include: Annual HUD Secretary’s Opportunity and Empowerment Award: Family Scholar House, Louisville, Kentucky by Regina C. Gray in Affordable Design; Tracking Individuals Pre- and Post-Foreclosure by Christos Makridis and Michael Ohlrogge in Data Shop; Visualizing and Comparing Residential Permit Data Using Lollipop Plots by Alexander Din in Graphic Detail; Acceptable Separation Distance Standards for Residential Propane Tanks by Maria Chelo Manlagnit De Venecia in Impact; Confirmations, New Insights, and Future Implications for HOPE VI Mixed-Income Redevelopment by Taryn H. Gress, Mark L. Joseph, and Seungjong Cho in Policy Briefs; and Where is the City’s Center? Five Measures of Central Location by Matthew J. Holian in SpAM.

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