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The arrival of immigrants increases demand for housing and puts upward pressure on shelter prices. Using instrumental variables based on the ancestry composition of residents in US counties, we estimate the causal impact of immigration on local shelter prices.

We apply two machine learning algorithms to forecast monthly growth of house prices and existing homes sales in Canada. Although the algorithms can sometimes outperform a linear model, the improvement in forecast accuracy is not always statistically significant.

We propose a model to understand low observed migration rates by considering the interaction between location and wealth decisions. We look at different policies and find that temporary moving vouchers only slightly increase welfare, while lower housing regulations can decrease the welfare gap by lowering house prices nationwide.

This paper measures how both geographical and cultural proximity of bank branches affect household credit choice and pricing. For credit products that require high levels of ex-ante screening, we find that both proximities can complement each other in reducing the cost of providing soft information, thereby increasing credit access.

The Bank of Canada is publishing a new set of indicators of financial vulnerabilities. This will allow households, the private sector, financial authorities and governments to better understand and monitor the evolution of two key vulnerabilities in the financial system: the elevated level of household indebtedness and high house prices.

Existing literature documents that house prices respond to monetary policy surprises with a significant delay, taking years to reach their peak response. We present new evidence of a much faster response.

We assess how location affects house prices in Canada. The gap in prices between suburbs and downtown was closing gradually before the pandemic. The gap has been closing faster since spring 2020. This finding reflects a shift in preferences toward more living space.

We introduce a novel approach to categorize mortgaged homebuyers into first-time homebuyers, repeat homebuyers and investors. We show how these groups contribute to activity in Canadian housing markets, and we analyze the differences in their demographic and financial characteristics.

We study the relationship between characteristics of new mortgages and borrowers’ financial stress in Canada’s energy-intensive regions following the 2014 collapse in oil prices. We find that borrowers with limited home equity were more likely to have difficulty repaying debt.

The physical network of bank branches is important in how consumers manage their cash holdings. This paper estimates how consumer withdrawal behaviour responds to the distance they must travel to their branch.