SGER: The Regional Real Estate Database and Project: Implications for Public Policies in the U.S. Housing Market

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The nation is in the throes of a major housing market correction and an accompanying financial market crisis. Almost overnight, policy makers have come to the realization that a large part of the cause was the result of public policy gone wrong: excessive deregulation of the financial industry and insufficient oversight of the mortgage origination industry. While the nation struggles to overcome the consequences of past mistakes, it must also start to restructure government?s role in both industries. The problem is that there are few serious analyses of the depth and complexities of the policy mistakes that led to soaring foreclosures and the snowball effect created by plummeting home values. As policy makers contemplate new sets of regulations and guidelines, they will have to weigh the sometimes conflicting objectives of expanding homeownership to American households and the need to have a more secure and stable housing market in which homeownership is sustainable. This requires analyses of affordability and mortgage qualifications and of the misguided innovations which led millions of homeowners to take upon themselves mortgage obligations beyond their means.Such analyses, however, cannot proceed without better databases with which serious academic studies can be conducted. The lack of data has forced both academics and policy markers to discuss the past and its implications for future policy using only anecdotal information or crude aggregate data. This research project corrects this problem by systematically collecting and organizing panel housing market data from multiple sources that enables researchers to address a wide variety of housing market issues.