I am a PhD candidate at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
In my job market paper, I study how converting suburban single-family homes to rentals affects spatial inequality, using the entry of large-scale corporate landlords as an empirical setting.
I am on the 2024-25 job market.
Abstract
Insufficient rental supply in American suburbs limits mobility for financially constrained households unable to afford homeownership. I find that reallocating suburban single-family homes to rentals reduces spatial inequality by increasing access to desirable neighborhoods for non-White and younger households. In my reduced-form analyses, I exploit the entry of large-scale corporate landlords and leverage property-level data on home prices, rents, and tenant characteristics. Due to increasing returns to local scale, landlords pay a 9% premium to acquire owner-occupied homes, increasing rental supply in suburbs where it is scarce and expensive. This expansion of rental supply lowers rents while raising home prices. To assess the distributional consequences, I develop a quantitative spatial equilibrium model with segmented housing markets. Converting ownership homes to rentals benefits down payment-constrained households by reducing barriers to high-amenity neighborhoods. However, the estimated non-pecuniary benefits of homeownership suggest that households who can marginally afford a home lose out.
Presentations
2024 ASSA/AREUEA Doctoral Poster Session; Berkeley Law Consumer Law Scholars Conference; North American Meeting of the Urban Economics Association; 2023 Regional/Urban/Spatial/Housing (RUSH) Brownbag; 2022- Berkeley Trade Lunch; Real Estate Graduate Seminar; Financial Economics Seminar; Finance Internal Seminar; Public Finance Seminar; Public Finance and Labor Mini-Symposium
Awards
John Clapp Best Poster Award, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association
with Grace Choi
Abstract
To promote homeownership, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) provides high-leverage mortgages to first-time homebuyers. Using a dataset on the portfolio of the near universe of property owners in nine Californian counties that we obtain through partnerships with city officials and journalists, we find that a large number of local mom-and-pop landlords misuse FHA mortgages to finance rental investment. Leveraging property-level panel data on mortgage performance and a unit-level rent registry panel, we study whether FHA mortgaged-landlords are financially riskier and whether they target a specific segment of the rental market (e.g., Section 8 Voucher tenants) compared to other landlords.
with Jaeyeon Lee
Abstract
We study a macroprudential policy that reduced the loan-to-value ratio down to 0% in "hot" housing markets. The drastic reduction in credit supply had negligible effects on house price growth in the affected neighborhoods. Instead of depressing housing demand, the policy induced households to turn to the rental market in the targeted neighborhoods. We propose a spatial equilibrium model with mobility frictions and show that tightening credit stimulates local rental markets. Renters provide liquidity to landlords who acquire properties that financially constrained households cannot afford. House price effects are muted and housing wealth is redistributed from households to deep-pocketed landlords.
Presentation
Berkeley Real Estate Graduate Seminar
with Michael Gechter, Nick Tsivanidis, and Nathaniel Young
Abstract
What does a migrant influx imply for the welfare of both urban incumbents and the migrants themselves, and what policies are most effective for relieving the associated problem of congestion? Using administrative data, call detail records (CDR) for the universe of cellphone transactions made on one of Jordan’s largest operator’s network from mid-2015 until the present and a linked survey we conducted, we document patterns of migration into Amman at high spatial and temporal frequency and examine the effects of the migrant influx given city structure.
Presentations
ASSA Econometric Society