Consumer Finance

This report is part of a quarterly series on key observations from the Labor, Income, Finances, and Expectations (LIFE) Survey. Data from the survey provide insight into consumers’ recent financial lives and their future expectations.

WP 25-37 – This paper documents the growth of single-family REITs (SF-REITs) and their (non)effects on housing markets by constructing a novel dataset of SF-REITs’ underlying properties.

DP 25-02 – This paper describes methodological approaches for extracting structured data from historical documents. We show the benefits of an "adaptive modular" approach leveraging optical character recognition, full-text search, and frontier LLMs.

WP 25-35 – Older home sellers receive lower returns than younger home sellers. Homes sold by older people have fewer major renovations but higher rates of poor upkeep. Older sellers are also more likely to sell off-MLS (“pocket listings”) and to sell to investors, leading to lower prices.

WP 24-10/R – The author studies how bankruptcy law firm advertisements affect household credit, exploiting the borders of local TV advertisement media markets.