Monetary Policy and Home Buying Inequality

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ringo, Daniel
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01445
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: interest-rates; transmission; inference

摘要

Does monetary policy influence who becomes a homeowner? Lower-income home buyers may be more sensitive to interest rates, at least in part because they more frequently come up against binding payment-to-income ratio constraints in credit decisions. Exploiting the timing of high-frequency observations of individual mortgage rate locks around monetary policy shocks, I find that a 1 percentage point policy-induced increase in mortgage rates lowers the presence of lower-income households in the population of home buyers by 1 to 2 percentage points immediately following the shock. Effects are substantially stronger among first-time home buyers and persist for approximately one year.