THE TREATMENT OF “HOME OWNERSHIP” IN THE CPI*

This paper explores the imputed service price approach to the pricing of the services of consumer-owned-and-used durables in the construction of the consumer price index, using the services of owner-occupied housing as an illustration. A theoretical framework for analyzing this question is first developed. Certain practical problems are then discussed. The conceptual difficulty of constructing an appropriate rate of return on the basis of available data on interest rates and house prices, in the context of inflation, is explored. Two arguments are advanced that statistical agencies ought not to follow the imputed service price approach in pricing the services of owner-occupied dwellings and other consumer durables. On the one hand, nominal interest rates will, in any short period, reflect monetary policy and not any change in the money “rental” of owner-occupied houses. Second, movements in nominal interest rates will also reflect changes in the money price of pure consumption goods, as well as changes in the money price of houses. The argument is extended to other consumer durables and, in the limiting case, to monetary balances, and it is concluded that in all but trivial cases the application of the service price approach leads to price movements of little or no meaning.     

On the user cost and homeownership

This paper studies the differences in the cost of housing services for renters and homeowners and calculates the bias that results when we value owner-occupied housing services using a rental equivalence approach. Our framework is a life-cycle model with endogenous tenure choice with households facing idiosyncratic uninsurable earnings risk and housing price risk. We model houses as illiquid assets that provide collateral for loans. To analyze the impact of preferential housing taxation on the tenure choice and the bias, we consider a tax system that mimics that of the US economy. Namely, owner-occupied housing services are not taxed and mortgage interest payments are deductible. Through simulations, we show that a rental equivalence approach (relative to a user cost approach) overestimates the cost of housing services. The magnitude of the bias is very sensitive to both the income tax rate and the size of adjustment costs in the housing market.     

Housing prices and tenure choice with asymmetric taxes and progressivity

This paper studies the effects of tax schedule changes on prices and tenure choice in the housing market. It is shown that, given the present asymmetric treatment of owner-occupants vs. renters, an increase in the degree of progressivity is likely to lead to an increasein the prices of both owner-occupied and rental housing. A numerical example indicates that the effects may be quite large. Equilibrium prices are calculated based on the actual Swedish income tax schedules for 1971 and 1979. According to these simulations the tax changes that took place between these years caused the price of owner-occupied houses to increase by around 30 percent, and the rent level to increase by 2 or 3 percent.     

Using house prices to compute the price of housing in the CPI

Rental-equivalence is often used in computing price changes of owner-occupied housing in the CPI. We use an alternative approach, employing interest-adjusted house prices. For Norway 2000–2008 our method yielded a 30% CPI-increase, compared to the official 17%.     

Testing for rational bubbles in the US housing market

The presence of a bubble in the US housing market prior to the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis is investigated. This is done by looking into the relationship between house prices and rental prices, known as the price–rent ratio, which is an important measure of a potential deviation between house prices and its fundamental value. Additionally, the interest rate is taken into account since it is an important factor in determining demand for housing mortgages and thereby influencing house prices, and explosive behavior of house prices is considered. These relationships are investigated through a theoretical and econometrical framework. The empirical evidence suggests that there was a bubble in the housing market prior to the financial crisis, even when controlling for the decreasing interest rate and the fundamental information given by the rental price in the period. Explosiveness was the main source of the price increase, such that a bubble was present in the housing market after correcting for other fundamental factors. The econometric procedures used in the analysis may therefore be relevant for monitoring the housing market.     

THE RENT-PRICE RATIO FOR THE AGGREGATE STOCK OF OWNER-OCCUPIED HOUSING

We construct a quarterly time series of the rent-price ratio for the aggregate stock of owner-occupied housing in the United States, starting in 1960, by merging micro data from the last five Decennial Censuses of Housing surveys with price indexes for house prices and rents. We show that the rent-price ratio ranged between 5 and 5.5 percent between 1960 and 1995, but rapidly declined after 1995. By year-end 2006, the rent-price ratio reached a historic low of 3.5 percent. For the rent-price ratio to return to its historical average over, say, the next five years, house prices likely would have to fall considerably.     

THE HOUSING STOCK,HOUSING PRICES,AND USER COSTS: THE ROLES OF LOCATION,STRUCTURE, AND UNOBSERVED QUALITY

Which housing characteristics are important for understanding homeownership rates? How are housing characteristics priced in rental and owner-occupied markets? What can answers to these questions tell us about economic theories of homeownership? Using the English Housing Survey, we estimate a selection model of property allocations to the owner-occupied and rental sectors. Structural characteristics and unobserved quality are important for selection. Location is not. Accounting for selection is important for rent-to-price ratio estimates and explains some puzzling correlations between rent-to-price ratios and homeownership rates. These patterns are consistent with, among others, hypotheses of rental market contracting frictions related to housing maintenance.     

Progressive Tax-Based Tenure Choice: A study of Korean Housing Rentals

In Korea, there exists a unique form of housing rental called the “Chun-Sae” (C.S.). The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical model for tax-based tenure choice between ownership and rental, to develop a model to evaluate the C.S. price, and to seek an explanation for the currently observed anomaly (i.e., a wide disparity between the present value of C.S. and the market price of house). The model is also found to be useful in evaluating the effectiveness of capital gain tax on a second house. [210]     

Hazardous Waste Hits Hollywood: Superfund and Housing Prices in Los Angeles

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the effect of various actions taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under CERCLA, commonly known as the Superfund Program, on housing prices. This study uses a housing transaction panel dataset encompassing the five major counties of the Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area to estimate the program’s influence on the local housing market. Using house and time-varying census tract fixed effects, I am able to avoid many of the endogeneity problems seen in previous research attempting to measure the Superfund treatment effect. An estimate of the effect on housing prices is given for each of the major events that occur under a typical Superfund remediation. After controlling for confounding correlated unobservables, I find a 7.3 % increase in sales price for houses within 3 km of a site that moves through the complete Superfund program. The analysis gives evidence of positive price appreciation for housing markets and serves as a lower bound for measuring remediation benefits.     

Joint Adjustment of House Prices, Stock Prices and Output Towards Short‐run Equilibrium

A dynamic IS‐LM model including houses and stocks as additional assets will be analysed in this paper. Providing also housing services, a major consumption item for most households, houses create an additional link between the monetary and the real sector, distinct from the traditional wealth effect channel. We analyse the adjustment path of output, house prices and stock prices after policy shocks within a rational expectation setup. Depending crucially on the elasticity of housing services demand, different reaction patterns of asset prices will emerge. The results are contrasted with relevant empirical findings, particularly Lastrapes (Journal of Housing Economics, 11 (2002), pp. 40–74), leading to the identification of plausible elasticity ranges. The analysis sheds new light on the ongoing discussion about demand effects from changing real estate wealth and about determinants of house price fluctuations.     

China’s house price: Affected by economic fundamentals or real estate policy?

Many theory and empirical literature conclude that house price can reflect economic fundamentals in the long-term. However, by using China’s panel data of 35 main cities stretching from 1998 to 2007, we find that there is no stable relationship between house price and economic fundamentals. House price has deviated upward from the economic fundamentals since government started macro-control of the real estate market. We consider that the mechanism between the house price and economic fundamentals is distorted by China’s real estate policy, especially its land policy. Meanwhile the policy itself is an important factor in explaining the changes of China’s house price. Then we estimate the dynamic panel data model on house price and the variables which are controlled by real estate policy. The result shows: land supply has negative effects on house price; financial mortgages for real estate have positive effects on house price; and the area of housing sold and the area of vacant housing, which reflects the supply and demand of the housing market, has negative effects on house price. We also find some differences in house price influence factor between eastern and mid-western cities. Finally, we propose policy suggestions according to the empirical results.     

Identification of house price bubbles using user cost in a state space model

This article studies how much variation in house prices results from nonfundamental factors. We propose a relative valuation approach to quantifying a bubble in housing by incorporating the housing User Cost into a state space model. We find that UK house prices were undervalued from January 1995 to May 2001 and subsequently moved into a bubble over the period to October 2012. Our results support the bounded rationality hypothesis in the long run. However, we also find that the irrational and the rational expectation hypotheses can coexist in the short run when explosive bubbles are driven by price dynamics.     

Explaining House Prices in Australia: 1970–2003*

This paper aims to explain changes in real house prices in Australia from 1970 to 2003. We develop and estimate a long-run equilibrium model that shows the real long-run economic determinants of house prices and a short-run asymmetric error correction model to represent house price changes in the short run. We find that, in the long run, real house prices are determined significantly and positively by real disposable income and the consumer price index. They are also determined significantly and negatively by the unemployment rate, real mortgage rates, equity prices and the housing stock. Employing our short-run asymmetric error correction model, we find that there are significant lags in adjustment to equilibrium. When real house prices are rising at more than 2 per cent per annum, the housing market adjusts to equilibrium in approximately four quarters. When real house prices are static or falling, the adjustment process takes six quarters.     

The effect of monetary policy on real house price growth in South Africa: A factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) approach

This paper assesses the impact of monetary policy on real house price growth in South Africa using a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR), estimated using a large data set comprising of 246 quarterly series over the period 1980:01 to 2006:04. The results based on the impulse response functions indicate that, in general, house price inflation responds negatively to monetary policy shock, but the responses are heterogeneous across the middle-, luxury- and affordable-segments of the housing market. The luxury-, large-middle- and medium-middle-segments are found to respond much more than the small-middle- and the affordable-segments of the housing market. More importantly, we find no evidence of the home price puzzle, observed previously by other studies that analyzed house prices using small-scale models. We put this down to the benefit gained from using a large information set.     

The Role of Chonsei as a Price Protector in the Korean Housing Market

In this study, we investigate whether ‘Chonsei,’ the distinctive type of housing contract system in Korea, has a favorable impact on house prices during a market downturn. We show the mechanism in which Chonsei prevents a sharp drop in house prices based on sellers’ loss aversion behavior. Moreover, using data on the Seoul condominium (i.e. apartment) market during the 2006–2017 period, we find that Chonsei prices have a negative impact on the housing trade volume in a market recession. This finding is consistent with our argument that loss aversion behavior appears with regard to the rise in Chonsei prices and thereby Chonsei functions as a price protector in the Korean housing market.     

Housing booms and media coverage

This article analyses news media coverage of the housing market. Building on theories of media influence where word of mouth is the final mechanism of opinion change but media initiate discourse, I examine the relationship between news media and the recent UK house price boom. Over 30 000 articles on the UK housing market from the period 1993 to 2008 are analysed, and it is found that media Granger-caused real house price changes, suggesting the media may have influenced opinions on the housing market. However, media sentiment on the housing market did not change with the secular increase in house prices in the 2000s, suggesting that the media did not contribute to the UK’s housing boom and may have helped constrain it.     

Explaining UK house price inflation 1971–89

An econometric analysis of UK house price inflation and changes in residential construction is presented for the period 1971–89, paying particular attention to the supply side of the housing market. The results of this analysis are used to examine the contributions of the various factors to the nominal rate of house price inflation. While the results confirm the importance of real disposable income in determining house prices, they indicate that supply variables may be of greater importance than interest rates in this respect. There are close similarities between the three housing booms of the 1970s and 1980s.     

Educational attainment,growth and poverty reduction within the MDG framework: simulations and costing for the Peruvian case

Using quarterly data, 1999:Q2–2009:Q3, we empirically examine the key macro determinants of housing prices for China’s residential market. Employing Granger causality and Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) models, we find that there exists strong bivariate causality between house price increases and its determinants. The variance decomposition suggests that speculative factors reflected by past increases in real house price contribute a relatively larger proportion to house price rises relative to fundamental factors.     

HOUSE PRICES AND CONSUMPTION INEQUALITY

I characterize how house price shocks affect consumption inequality using a life cycle model of housing and nonhousing consumption with incomplete markets. I derive analytical expressions for the dynamics of inequalities and use these to analyze large house prices swings seen in the United Kingdom. I show that movements in consumption inequality were large, that they correspond with the theoretical predictions qualitatively, and that the model explains a large fraction of the movements quantitatively. I demonstrate the accuracy of this analysis using an extended model's full nonlinear solution. Finally, accounting for house price shocks alters estimates of labor–income risks using cross‐sectional data.     

Clarification of misled statistic data: overestimated per-capita housing area

The per-capita urban housing area determines trends in the real estate market largely. These trends are important in formulating economic policies. The China Statistical Yearbook provides two groups of data for ‘per-capita urban housing.’ The demand–supply situation of the Chinese housing market must be analyzed and predicted by using different versions of data. This study uses data from Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China, which comprise projected timing comparative data of the Chinese per-capita urban housing area, and predicts the future demand–supply situation of the Chinese housing market using the Gompertz model. The result shows that the per-capita urban housing area has declined since 2001, but the tight trend of the Chinese real estate market and the pressure of rising house prices will last for a relatively long time. The construction speed of commercial houses will only slow down if the urbanization proportion reaches 75%.