Publications

January 2013 (Revised June 2017)
Case

The Perfect Storm: What Happens When the Market Moves Four Standard Deviations?

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz

Adam Carter was the portfolio manager for Tate Modern Finance III, L.P. (“Tate” or the “Fund”), the third in a series of U.S. commercial real estate debt funds sponsored by the London-based Tate Partners. The Fund was capitalized with $700 million of equity... View Details

Keywords: CMBS; CLO; Repo Financing; Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Financing and Loans

22 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

When Will the Hot Housing Market Finally Start to Cool?

The United States housing market is tight and expensive and shows no signs of easing. Existing home sales hit a 15-year high in 2021, with 6.12 million sold, a jump of 8.5 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors. Median... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

February 2020
Case

Seso Global: Building a Blockchain-enabled Property Marketplace in Nigeria

By: Boris Vallee and Yang (Dolly) Yu

The mutual aspiration of addressing the housing shortage and improving real estate market efficiency led Daniel and Phillip to co-found Seso Global in 2017. Seso Global developed a unique integrated platform to streamline and rationalize the process of acquiring and... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Blockchain; Developing Markets; Entrepreneurial Management; Financing and Loans; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Property; Growth and Development Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Real Estate Industry; Africa; Nigeria

March 2013
Case

NovaStar Financial: A Short Seller's Battle

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Amy Kaser

The NovaStar case describes the challenges faced by short seller Marc Cohodes of hedge fund Rocker Partners as he tried to expose what he thought was widespread fraud in mortgage lender NovaStar Financial. The case is set in the time period from 2001 to 2007 and tracks... View Details

24 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

What’s Government’s Role in Regulating Home Purchase Financing?

book This Time Is Different, credit markets particularly mortgage markets are prone to boom and bust cycles that can have long-lasting and devastating economic impacts.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Subprime Meltdown: American Housing and Global Financial Turmoil

By: Julio Rotemberg

This case focuses on the financial difficulties faced in the U.S. from August to December 2006 as well as their roots in subprime lending. After briefly discussing how mortgages were structured and traded in the pre-1990 period, it describes subprime mortgage lending,... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Central Banking; Financial Markets; Mortgages; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; United States

2023
Working Paper

The Credit Supply Channel of Monetary Policy Tightening and Its Distributional Impacts

By: Joshua Bosshardt, Marco Di Maggio, Ali Kakhbod and Amir Kermani

This paper studies how tightening monetary policy transmits to the economy through the mortgage market and sheds new light on the distributional consequences at both the individual and regional levels. We find that credit supply factors, specifically restrictions on... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Mortgages; Macroeconomics

2011
Chapter

The Economics of Housing Finance Reform

By: David S. Scharfstein and Adi Sunderam

This paper analyzes the two leading types of proposals for reform of the housing finance system: (i) broad-based, explicit, priced government guarantees of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and (ii) privatization. Both proposals have drawbacks. Properly-priced... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Housing; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Government and Politics

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March 2006 (Revised April 2006)
Case

International Place (A): Boston Real Estate Playoff

First International Place, one of Boston's premier office buildings, was the subject of a control contest in 2005, as the New York real estate firm Tishman Speyer purchased the mortgage on the property through a sealed bid auction process and then sought to foreclose... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Mortgages; Auctions; Insolvency and Bankruptcy

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16 Oct 2019
News

Climate Change Is Going to Transform Where and How We Build

February 1995 (Revised September 1995)
Case

The Bourland Companies

By: William J. Poorvu and John H. Vogel Jr.

Michael Bourland, the president of the Bourland Companies, needs to refinance two properties, an office building in southern New Hampshire and a retail property in Massachusetts. He is considering three alternatives: a renewal of a bank mini-perm, a 15-year mortgage... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Property; Mortgages; Family Business; Financial Management; Family Ownership; Real Estate Industry; Massachusetts; North and Central America

January 2008 (Revised September 2009)
Case

Financing American Housing Construction in the Aftermath of War

By: David Moss and Cole Bolton

At the start of WWI, the United States faced a significant housing shortage. Public officials feared the spread of disease—and even communism—in the nation's cramped urban centers where vacancy rates held near zero and families often "doubled up" in single-housing... View Details

Keywords: Central Banking; Bonds; Mortgages; Government Legislation; Business History; Housing; Banking Industry; United States

03 Apr 2011
News

Why Red Flags Can Go Unnoticed

25 Jan 2011
News

Harvard's Retsinas Interview on U.S. Home Prices

May 2020
Article

How Quantitative Easing Works: Evidence on the Refinancing Channel

By: Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani and Christopher Palmer

We document the transmission of large-scale asset purchases by the Federal Reserve to the real economy using rich borrower-linked mortgage-market data and an identification strategy based on mortgage market segmentation. We find that central bank QE1 MBS purchases... View Details

Keywords: Monetary Policy; MBS; Quantitative Easing; LSAP; Refinancing; Deleveraging; HARP; GSE; Central Banking; Global Range; Financing and Loans; Credit; United States