The Time‐Varying Price of Financial Intermediation in the Mortgage Market

We introduce a new measure of the price charged by financial intermediaries for con-necting mortgage borrowers with capital market investors. Based on administrativelender pricing data, we document that the price of intermediation reacts stronglyto variation in demand, reflecting capacity constraints of mortgage originators. Thispositive comovement of price with quantity reduced the pass-through of quantitativeeasing. We also find a notable upward trend in this price between 2008 and 2014,likely due to increased legal and regulatory burden in the mortgage market. Thetrend led to an implicit cost to borrowers of nearly $100 billion over this period.