Economics Research Seminar: Dr. Stephen Billings (University of Colorado)

Title: The Erosion of Homeownership and Minority Wealth

Read “The Erosion of Homeownership and Minority Wealth” 

Abstract

Since the Great Recession, the traditional path to wealth creation through home ownership has stalled and worsened for many minority households. One potential and largely unexplored driver of this trend is the growing presence of institutional investors that purchase single-family homes and convert them to permanent rentals. We find that large institutional investors alone have decreased homeownership rates in Black neighborhoods in high growth southern cities like Charlotte, North Carolina by 4 percentage points. Using a granular spatial difference-in-differences estimator, we show that an institutional investor purchase leads to a 2% decline in neighboring property values. This effect is almost exclusively limited to majority Black suburban neighborhoods. These property value declines are also associated with commonly hypothesized social spillovers from the loss of homeownership, namely increases in crime and decreases in property maintenance and political participation.

About Steve Billings

Steve’s research focuses on the intersection of housing, schools, neighborhoods and crime. His work addresses several important policy issues including the impact of public investment in light-rail transit on neighborhoods, how school segregation influences academic achievement, political ideology and crime, the causes of neighborhood gentrification, lead-based paint and low-income housing as well as ongoing research that examines the impact of sea level rise and natural disasters on neighborhood sorting and household finances. His work has appeared in such publications as the The Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review:Insights, American Economic Journal:Applied Economics, The Review of Economics & Statistics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Urban Economics and Real Estate Economics.

Steve joined the University of Colorado – Boulder in the summer of 2016.  He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Colorado, a MS in urban planning from the University of North Carolina and a BS in economics from Georgetown University. He was previously at the University of North Carolina Charlotte where he was positioned in both and economics and public policy and was the faculty director for the real estate center.