NYU Furman Center Fall Speaker Series: Unintended Consequences of the FHA Program with Sophia (Sonia) Gilbukh
Please join the NYU Furman Center for a lunchtime presentation:
Unintended Consequences of the FHA Program
with
Sophia (Sonia) Gilbukh
Assistant Professor of Real Estate
CUNY Baruch College
Zicklin School of Business
Lunch will be served promptly at 11:45 a.m.
Please register here to attend in person. Please register here if you would prefer to join remotely.
Description:
In this project, Gilbukh and co-authors ask whether and why borrowers who use Federal Housing Administration (FHA) or Veteran Affairs (VA) loans are excluded from a part of the housing market. Using proprietary data on for-sale real estate listings, they find that close to 50% of sellers of FHA/VA eligible homes state that they explicitly do not advertise their listings FHA/VA borrowers. Gilbukh and co-authors thus find that the FHA and VA loan programs, while intended to help low-income and veteran families become homeowners, significantly limit the choice set of properties for these borrowers. They find that the variation in whether an eligible listing accepts or excludes FHA/VA bids is primarily driven by location, time, and real estate agents.
About the Presenter:
Sonia Gilbukh is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at CUNY Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business. Her research focuses on real estate intermediaries and how they affect the housing market. More broadly she studies markets with search frictions. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Haverford College and a PhD from New York University, Stern School of Business.