Scholarship
Research
My research examines housing markets, real estate finance, urban policy, and the choices households make within local markets.
Publications
Coresidence: How Parental Characteristics Matter
Real Estate Economics, 2026
Abstract
Coresidence in the parental home is known to depend on young adult characteristics and market conditions, but there is more limited knowledge on whether or how parental characteristics matter. We model the coresidence outcome as a multigenerational joint optimization decision and use Panel Study of Income Dynamics data to examine the association of parental housing and wealth with young adult coresidence. The findings show that parental financial capacity is negatively associated with the likelihood of coresidence. Housing capacity, captured by the size and ownership status of the parental home, is positively associated with the likelihood of coresidence. We observe a stronger association of parental wealth and housing capacity with coresidence in less affordable markets and over time.
From Vacancy to Verdancy? The Impact of Land Options on the Timing of Vacant Lot Investment
Real Estate Economics, 2024
Abstract
Land vacancy is a persistent phenomenon leading to various socioeconomic issues in postindustrial cities. We examine the relationship between the timing of vacant lot investment and land options and compare two investment options using a quasi-experimental design: housing investment that develops vacant lots into housing, and greening investment that converts vacant lots into gardens and reserves redevelopment options. By compiling a unique lot-level time-to-event dataset based on a large-scale vacant lot greening program in Philadelphia, we address the questions of whether and how introducing the option of greening investment to vacant lots can expedite initial investment and reduce vacancy. With the greening option, initial investment on vacant lots becomes less irreversible, thus reducing time in vacancy by 50% and elevating the hazard rate of investment by 80%. We test for the presence of the real options channel, identifying a decelerating (accelerating) effect of price uncertainty (price growth rate) on the timing of housing investment and insignificant effects of the factors on the timing of greening investment. Our findings suggest that vacant lot greening as an anti-blight strategy is more effective to expedite investment in neighborhoods with elevated uncertainty, subdued growth rate, moderately lower income, and heightened vacancy.
Why Do Young Adults Coreside with Their Parents?
Real Estate Economics, 2024
Abstract
Nearly one in every two adults aged 18–29 currently lives with their parents, compared to slightly more than one in four in 1960. The literature focuses on changing labor market conditions and marriage–childbearing delays to account for this shift. Using a Blinder–Oaxaca procedure, we identify a role for housing affordability, measured by market-level median housing rent or price to median household income ratios, as an additional factor in the increase in coresidency since but not before 2000. We endogenize the marriage–childbearing decision with a Heckman selection model and attribute up to a quarter of the observed 9-percentage-point increase in the coresidence share between 2000 and 2021 to a decrease in housing affordability. We find a nonlinear relationship between affordability and coresidence with the relationship strongest in the least affordable metros where affordability constraints might be more binding. Overall, these results show changes in market-level housing affordability are associated with the increase in young adult coresidence over the first two decades of the 21st century.
The Price Effects of Greening Vacant Lots: How Neighborhood Attributes Matter
Real Estate Economics, 2023
Abstract
We identify the effects of greening vacant lots on nearby housing prices and show how neighborhood attributes matter to these outcomes. Using data from a longstanding program in Philadelphia, we find that prices for houses within 1,000 feet of a greened vacant lot rise by about 4%, consistent with the literature, with the effect size increasing over time. Using the extensive data available in Philadelphia, we show how these effects vary by the attributes of the neighborhood in which they occur, with larger effects in areas with a high share of vacant land and higher-than-average median household incomes, with peak responses estimated at 19% and 15%, respectively. We demonstrate the importance of sample selection bias adjustment for identification of the effect of vacant lot greening.
Endowments and Minority Homeownership
Cityscape, 2019
Abstract
Fifty years after the adoption of the 1968 Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in the housing market, homeownership rates have not increased for Black or Hispanic households. The current homeownership rate for Black households is 42 percent, identical to the 1970 census reported level, and 48 percent for Hispanic households, lower than that in 1970. Using data from the 1989, 2005, and 2013 American Housing Surveys, we identify the extent to which group differences in household endowments account for persistently low minority homeownership levels.
Working Papers
Land Interventions and Urban Vitality: Evidence from Neighborhood Traffic
2026
Abstract
How do vacant land interventions reshape neighborhood traffic during and after a severe economic shock? Using the COVID-19 pandemic as an exogenous shock to aggregate demand, we compare mobility trajectories around formerly vacant lots that were greened or redeveloped through new construction, relative to lots that remained vacant. Our matched difference-indifferences estimates are consistent with a spatial coordination game characterized by multiple equilibria. We show that the capital required to anchor neighborhood commercial vitality depends on the strength of local network externalities. For agglomeration-sensitive amenities, greening stabilizes nearby visits relative to persistent vacancy, but the rebound in visits is stronger around new construction, suggesting that durable real estate investment provides a stronger anchor for recovery. For other amenities, both interventions mitigate the decline in local visits. These results suggest that vacant land policy should match the intensity of intervention to the structure of local demand: greening offers scalable blight remediation and neighborhood stabilization, while new construction is needed where recovery depends more strongly on agglomeration-sensitive visit activity.
Urban Demographic Decline and Housing Affordability
2026
Abstract
Declining housing affordability may shape family formation by slowing young adults’ transition from the parental home to independent household formation. This paper examines parental coresidence as a household-level margin linking local housing conditions, intergenerational resources, and later marriage and childbearing. Using PSID data, we follow young adults aged 25-34 in 2013 through 2023 and compare those living with parents at baseline to similar young adults living independently. We use baseline individual, parental, and market characteristics to distinguish raw selection into coresidence from the adjusted relationship between coresidence and subsequent family formation. Baseline coresidence remains associated with lower later marriage and childbearing. However, this negative association is significantly weaker in less affordable housing markets. The findings suggest that coresidence is an important marker of young adults’ family-formation trajectories and that its relationship with family outcomes depends on whether living with parents reflects delayed independence in general, or is a housing-cost response.
Work in Progress
Beyond Proximity in the 15-Minute City: A Behavioral Framework for Local Access, Urban Centers, and Spatial Equity
2026
Rental Market Conditions and Housing Choice: Evidence from Near-Campus Housing Markets
2026
Risk Recast in Housing Markets: Evidence from an Appraisal Reform
2026
Young Adult Coresidence and Inter Vivos Transfers
2026
Other Research
Housing Search and Rental Market Intermediation
2020
Abstract
Rental brokers as the matchmakers between tenants and landlords contribute 80% of the rental listings in certain markets, but how they smooth the search friction and transmit policy impacts is not well understood. This paper is the first to use a listing-agent matched data set from an online platform to show the heterogeneous impact of the listing capacity of a broker, i.e. the agent size, on the rental market outcomes. I document that brokers with greater listing capacity are related to lower rents and shorter listing duration. The dispersion cannot be fully explained by the amenity difference of rentals and points to a sizable agent impact that a broker with greater capacity lists a rental at a lower rent. I develop a search model that features a search-and-matching process in which the capacity constraints of brokers interact with the tenant coordination friction. The capacity constraints differentiate brokers’ ability to coordinate tenant search. The smaller rent premium for listings by larger brokers reflects the capacity benefit that larger brokers coordinate tenant search better by reducing the likelihood of facing a binding capacity constraint. An endogenous agent distribution of the listing capacity, which summarizes how frictional the rental market is, arises in the model. I evaluate the counterfactual effects of two rental market policies. First, I show that expanding the brokerage sector will not benefit tenants in the search process. As the mean agent size decreases, the rental market becomes more frictional. Second, I evaluate the impact of shifting the commission liability from tenants to landlords, which is central to the New York rental market reform. As the equilibrium rent increase cannot fully compensate the commission cost on landlords, the policy decreases rental supply and makes searching tenants worse off. I characterize the optimal allocation of the broker’s fee and show that brokers with greater listing capacity should list more rentals with the fee paid by landlords
Vacant Lot Greening as a Long-Term Investment in Legacy Cities? Evidence from the LandCare Program in Philadelphia
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026
Abstract
Philadelphia’s LandCare Program, initiated in the mid‑1990s by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, presents a scalable and cost‑effective approach to addressing urban vacancy and blight through the transformation of neglected lots into maintained green space. This paper reviews the historical context of land vacancy in Philadelphia and charts the development of LandCare from localized pilot efforts to a citywide program integrated into the city’s planning goals. It examines the procedures of vacant lot remediation, outlines the program’s operational and maintenance costs, and presents before-and-after visual evidence of neighborhood change. Two empirical analyses evaluate the program’s economic impacts: one estimates the amenity value capitalized into nearby property prices, and the other explores how greening can reduce time in vacancy by facilitating vacant lot investment. The paper concludes with policy recommendations focusing on funding sustainability, inter-agency coordination, and the removal of legal and administrative barriers of land reuse. The Philadelphia experience offers valuable insights for other post-industrial legacy cities aiming to turn vacant land into a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization and long-term resilience.
REIT Capital Structure Choices: When Does Preparation Matter?
2021
Abstract
Pavlov, Steiner and Wachter (2018) find that REITs which prepared by reducing leverage and extending maturity prior to the 2007-2009 financial crisis outperformed their peers during the crisis, a result that holds in the presence of leverage and maturity level controls. While the authors document this finding, they are unable to identify its cause. The recent COVID-related market downturn and subsequent recovery offers a unique opportunity to extend this work and to test for why leverage adjustments before a crisis matter. Specifically, we document that the capital structure adjustments that have strong predictive power for the 2007-2009 financial crisis returns have no impact on the REIT returns during the COVID pandemic of 2020. The relevant difference between the two events is that the 2007-2009 financial crisis was largely predictable, especially for members of the real estate industry, while the COVID pandemic was truly unpredictable. Therefore, preparation prior to the 2007-2009 crisis was seen as a signal for managerial competence, but had no information value during the recent pandemic. In other words, managers are expected to prepare for changes in the external environment if and only if those changes are predictable.
Land Use Regulation, Regulatory Spillover and Housing Prices
2020
Abstract
We estimate the effect of city land use regulation on housing prices in the presence of regulatory spillover. The total effect of regulation is decomposed into a direct effect in which regulation lowers housing productivity and an indirect effect in which household location choice mitigates the price effects of regulatory restrictions. Using housing sales data from California, we structurally estimate a closed-form housing price equation based on a housing model with spatial arbitrage. We find that the total price effect of a one standard deviation increase in city restrictiveness is 9.3% on average, ranging from 4.1% to 14.4% across cities. The spillover effect is economically significant, with the size of the indirect effect equal to 21% of the direct effect for an average city, ranging from 0 to 47%. We point to the importance of identifying direct and indirect effects by controlling for regulation in surrounding locations. For jurisdictions with the power to impose regulation on a larger number of locations, regulation has a stronger price impact due to limits on regulatory spillover.
Housing Boom, Mortgage Default and Agency Friction
2018
Abstract
The housing prices and the mortgage debt witnessed faster growth than GDP in the run-up of the Great Recession. I document a mortgage market puzzle during the boom period: (1) the mortgage risk measured by the ex post delinquency increased, but (2) the mortgage spread decreased. The default premium alone cannot explain the decreasing mortgage spread in the boom episode. I develop a dynamic general equilibrium model of the housing and the mortgage markets with borrowers, depositors, and intermediaries to explain the empirical fact. The model features the tightness of the lending condition and the mortgage risk as the aggregate shocks, which generate the time-varying liquidity and default premiums in the mortgage spread. I quantify the contribution of the aggregate risks to the boom-bust dynamics before and after the Great Recession. A plausible size of the income shock alone is insufficient to generate the observed movement in the mortgage spread. The model shows that the lending relaxation that eases the leverage constraint of an intermediary leads to the increasing mortgage credit and the decreasing mortgage spread in the boom period. The lending condition shock generates pro-cyclical leverage of intermediaries that amplifies the aggregate shocks in the boom-bust dynamics.
A Literature Review of Career Concerns: Theories and Empirics
2015
Abstract
The paper conducts a literature review on the topic of career concerns covering both theory and empirics. Career concerns describe a class of dynamic games with asymmetric information, endogenous feedback and reputational concerns. As a mixture of adverse selection and moral hazard, the principal-agent models of career concerns are grouped into three categories based on different interpretation of the agent’s type: productivity, taste and preferences, and expertise. Career concerns possess explanatory power in many aspects of real life, from labor markets to social media, and from financial industries to political institutions.