Tag Archives: Gyourko

Regulation and Housing Supply

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Gyourko and Molloy have posted Regulation and Housing Supply to SSRN.  Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall (although it is also available at NBER if your library has access and an earlier draft can be found here). The abstract of this book chapter states that it reviews the scholarly literature on the causes and effects of local government regulation that “influences the amount, location, and shape of residential development.” The abstract continues,

We begin with a discussion of how researchers measure regulation empirically, which highlights the variety of methods that are used to constrain development. Many theories have been developed to explain why regulation arises, including the role of homeowners in the local political process, the influence of historical density, and the fiscal and exclusionary motives for zoning. As for the effects of regulation, most studies have found substantial effects on the housing market. In particular, regulation appears to raise house prices, reduce construction, reduce the elasticity of housing supply, and alter urban form. Other research has found that regulation influences local labor markets, and household sorting across communities. Finally, we discuss the welfare implications of regulation. Although the large positive externalities of some specific rules are clear, the benefits of more general forms of regulation are very difficult to quantify. On balance, a few recent studies suggest that the overall efficiency losses from binding constraints on residential development could be quite large.
Land use geeks are familiar with Gyourko’s analysis of land use regulation, but many non-economists are not.  Even if they are, they often give it short shrift. I found the extension of their analysis beyond the borders of the U.S. interesting:
In theory, the availability of buildable land might not constrain the supply of housing units if housing could be constructed as densely as necessary to meet demand. But in most places in the U.S.—and indeed around the world—local land use policy imposes limits on residential development that restrict the size and type of housing units that can be built on a given amount of land. These restrictions add extra costs to a construction project, creating a wedge between the sales price of a house and the cost of buying the land and building the structure. (3)
As communities struggle with housing affordability, the link between land use regulation and housing costs is one that should not be ignored.

Housing Vouchers for Landlords

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Collinson and Ganong have posted The Incidence of Housing Voucher Generosity to SSRN. The abstract of this important paper is a little technical for non-economists. It reads:

What is the incidence of housing vouchers? Housing voucher recipients in the US typically pay their landlord a fixed amount based on their income and the government pays the rest of the rent, up to a rent ceiling. We consider a policy that raises the generosity of the rent ceiling everywhere, which is equivalent to an income effect, and a policy which links generosity to local unit quality, which is equivalent to a substitution effect.

Using data on the universe of housing vouchers and quasi-experimental variation from HUD policy changes, we analyze the incidence of these policies. Raising the generosity of the rent ceiling everywhere appears to primarily benefit landlords, who receive higher rents with very little evidence of medium-run quality improvements. Setting ZIP code-level rent ceilings causes rent increases in expensive neighborhoods and decreases in low-cost neighborhoods, with little change in aggregate rents. The ZIP code policy improves neighborhood quality as much as other, far more costly, voucher interventions.

The eye-catching part is that raising “the generosity of the rent ceiling everywhere appears to primarily benefit landlords, who receive higher rents with very little evidence of medium-run quality improvements.” The paper itself fleshes this out more: “a $1 increase in the rent ceiling raises rents by 41 cents; consistent with this policy change acting like an income effect, we find very small quality increases of around 5 cents, meaning that as much as 89% of the increase in government expenditure accrues to landlords.” (20-21)

Given the inelasticity of the supply in many housing markets, this is not such a surprising result. That is, if demand increases because of an increase in income but supply does not, the producer (landlords) can capture more of that income just by raising prices. This finding should give policymakers pause as they design and implement voucher programs. The question that drives them.should be — how can they maximize the portion of the subsidy that goes to the voucher recipient?

State of the Union’s Rental Housing

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The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released its report, America’s Rental Housing: Evolving Markets and Needs. The report notes that

Rental housing has always provided a broad choice of homes for people at all phases of life. The recent economic turmoil underscored the many advantages of renting and raised the barriers to homeownership, sparking a surge in demand that has buoyed rental markets across the country. But significant erosion in renter incomes over the past decade has pushed the number of households paying excessive shares of income for housing to record levels. Assistance efforts have failed to keep pace with this escalating need, undermining the nation’s longstanding goal of ensuring decent and affordable housing for all. (1)

The report provides an excellent overview of the current state of the rental housing stock and households. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is how the report addresses the federal government’s role in the housing finance system. The report notes that

During the downturn, most credit sources dried up as property performance deteriorated and the risk of delinquencies mounted. Much as in the owner-occupied market, though, lending activity continued through government-backed channels, with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) playing an important countercyclical role.

But as the health of the multifamily market improved, private lending revived. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, banks and thrifts greatly expanded their multifamily lending in 2012, nearly matching the volume for Fannie and Freddie. Given fundamentally sound market conditions, multifamily lending activity should continue to increase. The experience of the last several years, however, clearly testifies to the importance of a government presence in a market that provides homes for millions of Americans, particularly during periods of economic stress. (5)

 The report, to my mind, reflects a complacence about the federal role in housing finance:

Although some have called for winding down Fannie’s and Freddie’s multifamily activities and putting an end to federal backstops beyond FHA, most propose replacing the implicit guarantees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with explicit guarantees for which the federal government would charge a fee. Proposals for a federal backstop differ, however, in whether they require a cap on the average per unit loan size or include an affordability requirement to ensure that credit is available to multifamily properties with lower rents or subsidies. While the details are clearly significant, what is most important is that reform efforts do not lose sight of the critical federal role in ensuring the availability of multifamily financing to help maintain rental affordability, as well as in supporting the market more broadly during economic downturns. (8)

The report gives very little attention to what the federal housing finance system should look like going forward, other than implying that change should be incremental:

To foster further increases in private participation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA—the regulator and conservator of the GSEs) has signaled its intent to set a ceiling on the amount of multifamily lending that the GSEs can back in 2013. While the caps are fairly high—$30 billion for Fannie Mae and $26 billion for Freddie Mac—FHFA intends to further reduce GSE lending volumes over the next several years either by lowering these limits or by such actions as restricting loan products, requiring stricter underwriting, or increasing loan pricing. With lending by depository institutions and life insurance companies increasing, the market may well be able to adjust to these restrictions. The bigger question, however, is how the financial reforms now under debate will redefine the government’s role in backstopping the multifamily market. Recent experience clearly demonstrates the importance of federal support for multifamily lending when financial crises drive private lenders out of the market. (27)

I would have preferred to see a positive vision from the Center for how the federal government should go about ensuring liquidity in the market during future crises and how it should support an increase in the affordable housing stock. Perhaps that is asking too much of such a broad report, although the fact that Fannie and Freddie are members of the Center’s Policy Advisory Board which provided funding for the report may have played a role as well. [I might add that I found it odd that the members of the Policy Advisory Board were not listed in the report.]

I do not want to end on a negative note about such a helpful report. I would note that it takes seriously some controversial ideas about increasing the supply of affordable housing.  The report advocates for the reduction of regulatory constraints on affordable rental housing construction. I interpret this as a version of the Glaeser and Gyourko critique of the impact of restrictive local land use regimes on housing affordability. As progressives like NYC’s new Mayor know, restrictive zoning and affordable housing construction are at cross purposes from each other.

New Direction for Federal Housing Policy? Finally!

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The Bipartisan Policy Center has released Housing America’s Future: New Directions for National Policy.  The Wall Street Journal reported (behind a paywall) that the report represents a “behind-the-scenes effort to jumpt-start the debate over Fannie’s and Freddie’s future . . ..”  My preliminary thoughts on it:

  • The report’s first key policy objective is exactly right:  “The private sector must play a far greater role in bearing
    credit risk.” (8) I have taken this position for years.  There is no reason that a large share of the credit risk should not be underwritten and borne by the private sector.  That is, after all, what they are supposed to do in free market.  This is not to say that the federal government has no role.  But the current state of affairs — with the government supporting more than 90 percent of home loans — is a recipe for the next housing disaster.
  • The government’s role should be limited to supporting the mortgage market for low- and moderate-income households and to playing the role of lender/insurer of last resort when the mortgage market dries up.
  • The report is again exactly right when it says that Fannie and Freddie should be wound down and replaced with a wholly-owned government entity that will not suffer from the dual mandate of fulfilling a public mission and maximizing profits for its shareholders.
  • The report favors a policy of assisting all very low-income households with their housing expenses.  This is a great and radical step.  But any such policy should take into account the Glaeser and Gyourko’s research that indicates that local land use policy can be at odds with federal housing policy in order to make sure that federal monies are used effectively.

I do not agree with the report in all respects.  Some examples:

  • The report characterizes the FHA as having only one “traditional mission of primarily serving first-time homebuyers.” (8) This characterization repeats the conventional wisdom but the conventional wisdom reads the history of the FHA incorrectly.  I will be posting an article on the history of the FHA later this year that will hopefully set the record straight.  The FHA certainly needs reform, but we should start with all of the relevant facts before jumping in.
  • The report asserts that housing counseling is effective (9) but the empirical evidence is not so clear.  Any policy that devotes significant resources to counseling should be built on a solid basis of empirical support.

Notwithstanding these criticisms, the report is a great first step toward developing a federal housing policy for the 21st Century.  More on the report anon.

Land Use Controls Caused The Financial Crisis?

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Respected Housng Economist Edwin Mills and co-author B.N. Jansen write in their article, “Distortions Resulting from Residential Land Use Controls in Metropolitan Areas”,

The strong conclusion of this paper is that stringent residential land use controls were a primary cause of the massive house price inflation from about 1992 to 2006 and possibly of the deflation that started in 2007.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine another plausible cause of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.  Popular accounts simply refer to a speculative housing price bubble.  But productivity growth in housing construction is faster than in the economy as a whole [citation omitted] and the US has an aggressive and competitive housing construction sector.  In the absence of excessive controls, housing construction would quickly deflate a speculative housing price bubble.

A final comment is that there appears to be no interest at any level of government, or among the articulate population, in reducing the stringency of land use controls.  Indeed, recent trends are in the opposite direction. (200)

Jansen and Mills rely heavily on a dataset constructed by Joseph Gyourko and others to analyze local land use control stringency.  I am not in a position to evaluate the dataset or the model that they use, but their findings are consistent with those of Gyourko and Edward Glaeser in Rethinking Federal Homeownership Policy.

It seems to me that Jansen and Mills overstate their case quite a bit — stringent land use controls may have been a necessary condition for the bubble, but I can’t see how their argument demonstrates that it was sufficient unto itself.  That being said, I would agree wholeheartedly that this hypothesis is worthy of serious study.  The relationship between land use and housing policy is way more important than most members of the “articulate population” understand.