CoreLogic has announced the winners of the second annual CoreLogic Academic Research Council (CLARC) award for scholarly research in the real estate and mortgage fields during the company’s 26th Annual RiskSummit.
Benjamin J. Keys, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago; Devin G. Pope, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago; and Jaren C. Pope, Department of Economics, Brigham Young University, were recognized for their paper Failure to Refinance. The paper examines how households that fail to refinance their mortgage when interest rates decline can lose out on substantial savings. Based on a large random sample of outstanding U.S. mortgages in December of 2010, they estimate that approximately 20 percent of households for whom refinancing would be optimal and who appeared unconstrained to do so, had not taken advantage of the lower rates. They estimate the present-discounted cost to the median household who fails to refinance to be approximately $11,500. A copy of the paper is available here. The paper was recognized as the most outstanding research from among all CLARC grant recipients. The scholars were awarded a cash grant from CoreLogic.
“This past year, CoreLogic, through the CLARC grant program, fulfilled more than 15 data grants to leading academic and non-profit researchers,” said CoreLogic Chief Economist Mark Fleming, PhD. “We are pleased to support a program that promotes scholarship and contributed to the dialogue among economists examining the mortgage lending and real estate markets. Each of the CoreLogic Academic Research Council grant recipients exemplifies the type of scholarly research that can make a meaningful contribution to understanding the dynamics of the housing and real estate markets.”
