TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Askitas, Nikos
AU  - Zimmermann, Klaus F.
        TI  - Detecting Mortgage Delinquencies
        PY  - 2011/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 5895
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp5895
        AB  - Economic hardship is strongly reflected by the housing market. It is the concern of much research, but its analysis is often obstructed by insufficient lagged data. This paper evaluates search intensity for "hardship letter" from Google Insights to detect ensuing mortgage delinquencies. Such searches locate documents which assist to write a successful loan modification request. Other relevant searches for "short sale", "REO" (as in Real Estate Owned) or "FHA" (as in Federal Housing Administration) are used to provide a comprehensive view of the housing market. Using data from the great recession and benchmarking them against data from the labor market, the paper demonstrates that internet activity captures socioeconomic phenomena in real time very well, with no interviewer effect at a high frequency. This suggests that the new data base should spur new housing research.
        KW  - housing
KW  - hardship letter
KW  - loan delinquency
KW  - mortgage
KW  - National Delinquency Survey (NDS)
KW  - financial crisis
KW  - recession
KW  - bubble
KW  - Google Insights
        ER  -