Learning from House Prices: Amplification and Business Fluctuations

Author(s):  
Ryan Chahrour ◽  
Gaetano Gaballo

Abstract We formalize the idea that house price changes may drive rational waves of optimism and pessimism in the economy. In our model, a house price increase caused by aggregate disturbances may be misinterpreted as a sign of higher local permanent income, leading households to demand more consumption and housing. Higher demand reinforces the initial price increase in an amplification loop that drives comovement in output, labor, residential investment, land prices, and house prices even in response to aggregate supply shocks. The qualitative implications of our otherwise frictionless model are consistent with observed business cycles and it can explain the economic impact of apparently autonomous changes in sentiment without resorting to non-fundamental shocks or nominal rigidity.

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Knoll ◽  
Moritz Schularick ◽  
Thomas Steger

How have house prices evolved over the long run? This paper presents annual house prices for 14 advanced economies since 1870. We show that real house prices stayed constant from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, but rose strongly and with substantial cross-country variation in the second half of the twentieth century. Land prices, not replacement costs, are the key to understanding the trajectory of house prices. Rising land prices explain about 80 percent of the global house price boom that has taken place since World War II. Our findings have implications for the evolution of wealth-to-income ratios, the growth effects of agglomeration, and the price elasticity of housing supply. (JEL C43, N10, N90, R31)


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rossini ◽  
Valerie Kupke

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address a key issue fundamental to the operation of land and housing markets, that is, the relationship between land and house prices. The study identifies possible causation between established house and vacant allotment prices using the metropolitan area of Adelaide, Australia as a case study. Design/methodology/approach – A key outcome of the study is the construction of a Site Adjusted Land Price Index against which a Quality Adjusted House Price Index is compared. Findings – The results show that there is a lagged effect of land prices on house prices and that this is significant at an interval of eight lag periods. The results also imply that the lead lag relationship between established house and vacant allotment prices is not unidirectional. This suggests that, while a change in house prices leads to a change in land prices in the short-run, the long-run position is for increasing land prices to lead to a delayed increase in house prices. Research limitations/implications – Rising house prices do not simply and solely reflect a shortage of land. There are suggested effects both immediate from house to land and delayed from land to house, particularly in a rising market. Originality/value – The lead lag relationships of both indexes are tested using Granger causality estimates to assess whether theoretical Ricardian concepts still hold in a modern urban land market.


Author(s):  
Stefan Homburg

Chapter 6 examines real estate as a neglected feature of actual economies. It begins with an empirical overview demonstrating the preeminent role of land as a part of nonfinancial wealth. Whereas many macroeconomic models represent nonfinancial wealth by a symbol K that is interpreted as machines and equipment (if not robots), the text makes clear that such items are of minor quantitative importance. In contemporary economies, nonfinancial wealth consists chiefly of real estate. This is the proper reason so many analysts conjecture a link between house prices and the Great Recession. Changes in house prices (primarily changes in land prices) operate on the economy through their influence on nonfinancial wealth. Nonfinancial wealth affects consumption directly and investment indirectly since it relaxes or tightens borrowing constraints. Building on the results obtained in previous chapters, the text studies housing manias and leverage cycles and relates its main findings to US data.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2198894
Author(s):  
Peter Phibbs ◽  
Nicole Gurran

On the world stage, Australian cities have been punching above their weight in global indexes of housing prices, sparking heated debates about the causes of and remedies for, sustained house price inflation. This paper examines the evidence base underpinning such debates, and the policy claims made by key commentators and stakeholders. With reference to the wider context of Australia’s housing market over a 20 year period, as well as an in depth analysis of a research paper by Australia’s central Reserve Bank, we show how economic theories commonly position land use planning as a primary driver of new supply constraints but overlook other explanations for housing market behavior. In doing so, we offer an alternative understanding of urban housing markets and land use planning interventions as a basis for more effective policy intervention in Australian and other world cities.


Author(s):  
James Todd ◽  
Anwar Musah ◽  
James Cheshire

Over the course of the last decade, sharing economy platforms have experienced significant growth within cities around the world. Airbnb, which is one of the largest and best-known platforms, provides the focus for this paper and offers a service that allows users to rent properties or spare rooms to guests. Its rapid growth has led to a growing discourse around the consequences of Airbnb rentals within the local context. The research within this paper focuses on determining impact on local housing prices within the inner London boroughs by constructing a longitudinal panel dataset, on which a fixed and random effects regression was conducted. The results indicate that there is a significant and modest positive association between the frequency of Airbnb and the house price per square metre in these boroughs.


Empirica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-861
Author(s):  
Maciej Ryczkowski

Abstract I analyse the link between money and credit for twelve industrialized countries in the time period from 1970 to 2016. The euro area and Commonwealth Countries have rather strong co-movements between money and credit at longer frequencies. Denmark and Switzerland show weak and episodic effects. Scandinavian countries and the US are somewhere in between. I find strong and significant longer run co-movements especially around booming house prices for all of the sample countries. The analysis suggests the expansionary policy that cleans up after the burst of a bubble may exacerbate the risk of a new house price boom. The interrelation is hidden in the short run, because the co-movements are then rarely statistically significant. According to the wavelet evidence, developments of money and credit since the Great Recession or their decoupling in Japan suggest that it is more appropriate to examine the two variables separately in some circumstances.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 508
Author(s):  
Lan Hu ◽  
Yongwan Chun ◽  
Daniel A. Griffith

House prices tend to be spatially correlated due to similar physical features shared by neighboring houses and commonalities attributable to their neighborhood environment. A multilevel model is one of the methodologies that has been frequently adopted to address spatial effects in modeling house prices. Empirical studies show its capability in accounting for neighborhood specific spatial autocorrelation (SA) and analyzing potential factors related to house prices at both individual and neighborhood levels. However, a standard multilevel model specification only considers within-neighborhood SA, which refers to similar house prices within a given neighborhood, but neglects between-neighborhood SA, which refers to similar house prices for adjacent neighborhoods that can commonly exist in residential areas. This oversight may lead to unreliable inference results for covariates, and subsequently less accurate house price predictions. This study proposes to extend a multilevel model using Moran eigenvector spatial filtering (MESF) methodology. This proposed model can take into account simultaneously between-neighborhood SA with a set of Moran eigenvectors as well as potential within-neighborhood SA with a random effects term. An empirical analysis of 2016 and 2017 house prices in Fairfax County, Virginia, illustrates the capability of a multilevel MESF model specification in accounting for between-neighborhood SA present in data. A comparison of its model performance and house price prediction outcomes with conventional methodologies also indicates that the multilevel MESF model outperforms standard multilevel and hedonic models. With its simple and flexible feature, a multilevel MESF model can furnish an appealing and useful approach for understanding the underlying spatial distribution of house prices.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 167-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Gyourko ◽  
Christopher Mayer ◽  
Todd Sinai

We document large long-run differences in average house price appreciation across metropolitan areas over the past 50 years, and show they can be explained by an inelastic supply of land in some unique locations combined with an increasing number of highincome households nationally. The resulting high house prices and price-to-rent ratios in those “superstar” areas crowd out lower income households. The same forces generate a similar pattern among municipalities within a metropolitan area. These facts suggest that disparate local house price and income trends can be driven by aggregate demand, not just changes in local factors such as productivity or amenities. (JEL R11, R23, R31, R52)


2018 ◽  
Vol 238 (6) ◽  
pp. 501-539
Author(s):  
Sören Gröbel ◽  
Dorothee Ihle

Abstract Housing property is the most important position in a household’s wealth portfolio. Even though there is strong evidence that house price cycles and saving patterns behave synchronously, the underlying causes remain controversial. The present paper examines if there is a wealth effect of house prices on savings using household-level panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the period 1996-2012. We find that young homeowners decrease their savings in response to unanticipated house price shocks, whereas old households hardly respond to house price changes. Although effects are relatively low in magnitude, we interpret this as evidence of a housing wealth effect.


2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Heeho Kim ◽  
◽  
SaeWoon Park ◽  
Sun Hye Lee ◽  
◽  
...  

This paper studies the abnormal price behavior of Kangnam, a premium (high price) housing submarket in Seoul, Korea, which addresses the correlation between house prices, bank lending, and other factors, including income. Kangnam experienced the most dramatic price escalation during the study period (1999-2009) despite Korean government policies to stabilize house prices in 2005 and the U.S. subprime crisis in 2008. The empirical result shows that even though the house price in a premium market is, to some degree, positively influenced by income, it is not affected by bank lending in the short-run while negatively affected in the long-run. This suggests that a premium housing submarket has a peculiar price dynamics of its own unlike the other submarkets which seem to comply more or less with our notion of a general economic theory, especially in terms of house prices and bank lending.


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