ESSAYS IN REAL ESTATE ECONOMICS AND FINANCE

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I study how all-cash sales spill over to nearby mortgage-financedtransactions through the residential appraisal process. Discounted nearby all-cash sales enter the comparableset used by appraisers, depress appraised values for mortgage purchases, and cap financing, so financeddeals either (i) bridge with cash, (ii) renegotiate, or (iii) fail. Based on a ring-based design using matcheddeed–mortgage-listing data from 2018 to 2022, I find that a one-standard-deviation increase in proximate cashactivity lowers appraisals by 1.39% and sale prices by 1.38% and lengthens time-on-market by 38 days. Thisspillover is highly local and recent, favoring the renegotiation channel over cash-gap bridging. These effectsare more pronounced for low-income, high-LTV, first-time, and minority buyers and in low-inventory neighborhoods,consistent with negotiation-driven information revelation that shifts surplus toward constrainedbuyers. Additional evidence links higher nearby cash activity to more HMDA “approved-but-not-accepted”outcomes, supporting a failure channel. A bargaining model with appraisal-anchored caps rationalizes thenear one-for-one appraisal-to-price pass-through and maps welfare: spillovers mainly redistribute surplus inthick, high-growth markets but generate exclusion and misallocation in thin, low-growth markets.In the second chapter, coauthored with Caitlin S. Gorback and Franklin Qian, we study the impact ofinstitutional Long-Term Rental (LTR) companies on housing markets. Since the Great Recession, LTRcompanies, including single-family rental and private equity firms, have reshaped the U.S. investor landscape.Using housing deeds data from 2010 to 2022, we show that LTRs outpaced other investors, and concentrategeographically. We develop an instrument that predicts LTR market share based on local product preferencesand decreasing management costs. A one-standard-deviation increase in LTR share raises house prices by1.58 p.p., lowers homeownership by 0.53 p.p., and does not affect rents. These averages mask significanttemporal heterogeneity. LTRs contribute to a 0.32% national homeownership decline by acquiring homesfrom owners and speculators.