Selectivity,Quality Adjustment and Mean Reversion in the Measurement of House Values*

This paper develops a model of price formation in the housing market which accounts for the non-random selection of those dwellings sold on the market from the stock of existing houses. The model we develop also accounts for changes in the quality of dwellings themselves and tests for mean reversion in individual house prices. The model is applied to a unique body of data representing all dwellings sold in Sweden's largest metropolitan area during the period 1982–1999. The analysis compares house price indices that account for selectivity, quality change and mean reversion with the conventional repeat sales models used to describe the course of metropolitan housing prices. We find that the repeat sales method yields systematically large biased estimates of the value of the housing stock. Our comparison suggests that the more general approach to the estimation of housing prices or housing wealth yields substantially improved estimates of the course of housing prices and housing wealth.     

Spatial Dependence and House Price Index Construction

Accurate estimation of prevailing metropolitan housing prices is important for both business and research investigations of housing and mortgage markets. This is typically done by constructing quality-adjusted house price indices from hedonic price regressions for given metropolitan areas. A major limitation of currently available indices is their insensitivity to the geographic location of dwellings within the metropolitan area. Indices are constructed based on models that do not incorporate the underlying spatial structure in housing data sets. In this article, we argue that spatial structure, especially spatial dependence latent in housing data sets, will affect the precision and accuracy of resulting price estimates. We illustrate the importance of spatial dependence in both the specification and estimation of hedonic price models. Assessments are made on the importance of spatial dependence both on parameter estimates and on the accuracy of resulting indices.     

The value of risk in real estate markets

In this article we test the urban asset pricing model of Capozza and Sick (1988) and focus on the empirical dimensions of the effects of risk on urban land prices. The effects of systematic and unsystematic risk are distinguished in the model which incorporates the value of the option to convert land to urban uses into the pricing of urban real estate. We find the value of systematic risk in our Canadian urban areas to be negative and highly statistically significant. We find that approximately 2.5 percent of the value of houses in our sample arises from systematic risk. In our sample, unsystematic risk is a larger proportion of total risk than systematic risk. Therefore, most of the effect of total risk may be ascribed to unsystematic risk. The effect of total risk on land prices is illustrated through the irreversibility premia estimates. These premia vary greatly in size and statistical significance. Thus, the effect of unsystematic risk is highly city specific. In the two regions where the irreversibility premia are statistically significant, it accounts for 22 percent and 53 percent of the average housing price; thus, unsystematic risk can be a very important determinant of housing prices.These results highlight the importance of risk in determining urban land prices. The value of the option to convert land to urban uses imparts considerable value to developed land and must be considered when evaluating interurban area price differences.     

Inconsistency in Welfare Inferences from Distance Variables in Hedonic Regressions

In hedonic analysis, a common approach for eliciting information regarding the welfare significance of some landmark or (dis)amenity is to control for its distance from each observation. Unfortunately, the effects of distances to amenities on housing prices are generally not consistent indicators of the true price impact of that amenity. Instead these variables serve as proxies for the relative position of every observation in space. Whenever a household considers more than two landmarks in a housing purchase, distance variable parameter estimates are simply the best linear fitted weights for that multiple criteria location decision. Simulations illustrate extreme sensitivity in parameter estimates to the researcher’s choice of landmarks. One strategy models the location of each observation directly instead of its distances to amenities. Using the quadratic controls of longitude and latitude controls for location effects on price to assure unbiased estimates of non-distance variable regressors.     

住房耐用品、土地市场分割与货币失踪之谜

2008年国际金融危机后,我国M2供给增幅远高于CPI上涨幅度,这一现象被学界称为“货币失踪之谜”。本文构建了一个两部门新凯恩斯货币模型来研究这一问题。当外部需求下降后,央行降低利率以提振经济,房地产部门和非房地产部门同时扩张。由于住房属于耐用消费品,具有一定的金融属性,其需求对利率变化更敏感。利率下降后,住房需求相对普通消费品需求上升更多。因为存在土地市场分割,商住用地供给弹性较小,住房需求上升导致商住用地价格上升较多,地价上涨提升了房地产企业的抵押融资能力,房地产部门进一步扩张。普通消费品需求对利率反应小,需求较弱导致工业用地价格上升幅度较小,非房地产部门抵押融资能力小幅提升。因此,非房地产部门产出和CPI只温和扩张。Ramsey最优货币政策模拟表明,只有实现了房地产部门与非房地产部门均衡发展,才能实现社会福利最大化。     

城市环境特征品质与中国房地产价格的区域差异

从城市环境特征角度研究中国房地产价格的区间差异,在Roback理论模型基础上提出了估计中国城市消费者和厂商环境特征品质价值的计量方法,并对我国所有地级及以上城市进行了截面分析.消费者环境特征品质方程估计结果显示:自然环境对我国居民效用水平的影响类似于其对美国居民的影响,工业污染严重地损害了居民的福利水平,但是,公共服务水平对我国居民效用水平的影响并不显著.厂商生产性环境特征品质方程的估计结果则表明,城市间交通条件、工业集聚以及生产性服务都对厂商有显著的价值.     

Pricing the US residential asset through the rent flow: A cross-sectional study

The paper explores how the standard consumption-CAPM fares in pricing housing returns and regional rental income streams in a cross-section of regions. In particular, we estimate the Euler equations associated with the gross housing returns inclusive of price appreciations and rents jointly for several metropolitan areas of the US. The representative agent has a Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) utility. The rent growth is allowed to depend on the business cycle. When biannual data from 1978 to 2007 is used, the parameter estimates are reasonable, and the model is not rejected. Large standard errors indicate uninformative estimates. The implied price rent ratio time series averages are similar to the data; however the model misses the boom-bust pattern in the prices. The model significantly understates the average and the variance of the price appreciations. Results are robust to allowing housing consumption directly in the utility function or using the Epstein–Zin–Weil utility.     

Assessing the Residential Property Tax Revenue Impact of a Shopping Center

This study investigates the impact of a shopping center on surrounding housing prices. Instead of using simple Euclidean distance to measure proximity to the shopping center, this study creates multiple sizes of driving time buffers around the shopping center to better reflect real accessibility and to capture the distance-decay effects of the accessibility. We apply a spatial hedonic model with a series of driving time buffer variables to capture the influence of a shopping center in a metropolitan county in Tennessee. The findings suggest that households place a positive value on proximity to a shopping center with a travel time distance of 3?C20?min in the case of the Turkey Creek Shopping Center, the largest and most recently developed shopping center in the Knoxville metropolitan area. Based on estimates of enhanced house values as they relate to proximity to the shopping center, we were able to calculate total annual property tax revenues ranging between $1.12 and $1.17 million for the county and city governments owing to the development of the Turkey Creek Shopping center.     

The Impact of Property Condition Disclosure Laws on Housing Prices: Evidence from an Event Study Using Propensity Scores

We examine the impact of seller??s Property Condition Disclosure Laws on residential real estate values. A disclosure law may address the information asymmetry in housing transactions shifting risk from buyers and brokers to the sellers and raising housing prices as a result. We combine propensity score techniques from the treatment effects literature with a traditional event study approach. We assemble a unique set of economic and institutional attributes for a quarterly panel of 291 US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) across 50 US States spanning 21?years from 1984 to 2004. The study finds that the average sales price of houses in a metropolitan area increases by an additional 3 to 4% over a 4?year period if the state adopts a Property Condition Disclosure Law, which is consistent with approximately a 19 basis point or 6.4% reduction in the risk premium associated with purchasing owner-occupied housing. When we compare the results from parametric and semi-parametric (propensity score) event analyses, we find that the semi-parametric analysis generates moderately larger estimated effects of the law on housing prices.     

Leverage,Consumer Finance,and Housing Prices in China

In this article, we focus on the effect of household borrowing behavior on housing prices in China, under the background of rapid growth of consumer finance during the past decade. We build a micromodel to deduce the relationship between consumers’ leverage, housing enterprises’ leverage, and housing prices and use a dynamic panel model and panel error correction model to do the empirical work. The results show that the first- and second-tier cities of China are greatly influenced by leverages, the second-tier cities also by local growth, and the third-tier cities are weakly affected by leverages but greatly affected by the land prices. Further explanations and discussions of the empirical results are given accordingly.     

The Announcement Effect of an Airport Expansion on Housing Prices

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the announcement of a new airport hub on housing prices near the airport. While numerous studies of airport noise have found that high noise levels reduce property values, few have been able to measure the announcement effect on values. The results indicate that after controlling to extraneous influences, housing property prices in a 2.5 mile band from the Greensboro/High Point/Winston Salem metropolitan airport declined approximately 9.2% in the post-announcement period. In the next 1.5-mile band, house prices declined approximately 5.7% in the post-announcement period.     

The Use of Census Data for Hedonic Price Estimates of Open-Space Amenities and Land Use

Hedonic price models for determining marginal implicit prices of open-space amenities and nonresidential land use were estimated using housing data from the census. Alternative model specifications were compared to evaluate the effects of aggregating land-use data by alternative levels of census geography as well as the use of different sample sizes of census blocks. It was determined that land use is best aggregated at the block group level and that entire populations or very large sample sizes of census blocks should be used with hedonic models.     

Changing Supply Elasticities and Regional Housing Booms

Developments in U.S. house prices over the past decade mirror those of the 1996–2006 boom. Construction activity has, however, been weak. Using data for 254 U.S. metropolitan areas, we show that housing supply elasticities have fallen markedly in recent years. We find that housing supply elasticities have declined more in areas in which land-use regulation has tightened the most, and in areas that experienced the sharpest housing busts. Consistent with the declining housing supply elasticities, we find that monetary policy shocks have had a stronger effect on house prices during the past decade than during the previous boom. At the same time, building permits respond less.     

中国城市住房价格动态特征及其影响因素

本文从理论和实证两个层面分析了1997-2007年中国35个大中城市的房价动态特征,并考察了城市因素对房价动态参数的影响。所得主要结论有:中国城市房价具有强序列相关和弱均值回归特征;住房使用成本、地区市场化指数、土地交易价格指数及其变化对序列相关系数有显著影响;真实收入及其变化、建造成本、地区市场化指数对均值回归系数有显著影响;各城市的房价动态参数拟合值几乎全部落入震荡收敛区内,东部城市房价的波动振幅普遍高于中西部城市;1999年后35个大中城市的平均房价波动振幅有逐渐增大的趋势,尤其是2007年的房价波动振幅出现了非正常增长,但波动频率变化幅度不大。     

Housing market dynamics in a small open economy: Do external and news shocks matter?

We study the sources of fluctuations in the housing market of a small open economy. We use an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model and data from seven small open economies to assess the quantitative effects of both contemporaneous and news shocks to domestic and external fundamentals on housing market dynamics. External shocks and news shocks have significant effects. Cyclical fluctuations in housing prices and housing investment are mainly driven by contemporaneous shocks related to foreign housing preferences and terms of trade, and by news shocks related to domestic consumption-goods technology, housing preferences and terms of trade. The spillover effects of external shocks on housing prices are notably larger than those of domestic shocks.     

The Choice of Methodology for Computing Housing Price Indexes: Comparisons of Temporal Aggregation and Sample Definition

Housing transactions are executed and recorded daily, but are routinely pooled into longer time periods for the measurement and analysis of housing price trends. We utilize an unusually rich data set, covering essentially all arm's length housing sales in Sweden for a dozen years, in an attempt to understand the effect of temporal aggregation upon estimates of housing prices and their volatilities. This rich data set also provides a unique opportunity to compare the results using the conventional weighted repeat sales model (WRS) to those based on a research strategy which incorporates all available information on house sales. The results indicate the clear importance of temporal disaggregation in the estimation of housing prices and volatilities—regardless of the model employed.The appropriately disaggregated model is then used as a benchmark to compare estimates of the course of housing prices produced by the two models during the twelve year period 1981–1993. These results indicate that much of the difference between estimates of price movements can be attributed to the data limitations which are inherent in the repeat sales approach. The results, thus, suggest caution in the interpretation of government-produced price indices or those produced by private firms based on the repeated sales model.     

经济集聚、人口流动与住宅价格空间溢出效应研究

基于省级面板数据,利用空间计量模型考量经济集聚、人口流动和住宅价格间的空间溢出效应关系.结果发现:中国省际住宅价格间存在着显著的正向空间相关性,即某一地区住宅价格的波动会受到周边地区或经济特征类似地区住宅价格波动的影响;人口流动在经济集聚和房价的关系中发挥着中介作用;经济集聚与住宅价格在空间上存在着显著的相关关系,经济集聚不仅会推高集聚中心住宅价格,还会通过"虹吸效应"和"涓滴效应"对周边住宅价格产生影响,而经济集聚对周边住宅价格的影响取决于人口净流入率的大小.     

Nonlinear Spatial and Temporal Effects of Highway Construction on House Prices

This paper studies the effect of a newly completed highway extension on home prices in the surrounding area. We analyze non-linearities in both the effect of distance from the highway and the effect of time relative to the completion of the road segment. While previous studies of the effects of nearby amenities on property and land values have focused on either cross-sectional spatial or temporal patterns, the joint analysis of the two dimensions has not been thoroughly investigated. We use home sale data from a period of 11 years centered around the completion of a new highway extension in metropolitan Los Angeles. We combine a standard hedonic model with a spline regression technique to allow for non-linear variations of the effect along the temporal and spatial dimensions. Our empirical results show that the maximum home price appreciation caused by the new highway extension occurs at moderate distances from the highway after it is completed. Lower price increases for this period are observed for homes sold closer to the highway or much further away. This price pattern gradually fades away in the years following the construction completion. A similar, although weaker, price pattern is also observed in the first years of the construction period. There is no statistically significant distance dependency in the 2 years in our sample prior to the beginning of the construction. This indicates that the housing market is not fully efficient as the information about the impending construction of the highway is not immediately incorporated into sales prices.     

我国商品房价格地区差异的分析及启示

近年来,随着房地产市场的快速发展,商品房价格持续快速上涨,房价成为政府和民众高度关注的一个问题。然而,商品房价格呈现明显的地区差异。文章以商品房价格运行理论为基础,分析了商品房价格的现状,通过建立商品房价格影响因素的实证模型分析地区差异的影响。提出在国家调控房地产市场和商品房价格的过程中,不仅局限于金融政策、财税政策、土地政策等,更要从根本上统筹安排,注重实施资源的均衡配置和差异化的调控政策,推进地区之间、城乡之间的一体化发展战略。     

收入差距、信贷约束与房价变动

本文通过构建一个异质性代理人模型,刻画了收入差距通过信贷渠道影响房价的作用机制。研究表明,收入差距的缩小提升了低收入者的收入占比,使该类人群获得了更多的外部融资进行购房,由此产生了两方面效应:(1)信贷约束放松降低了住房流动性溢价,从而对房价产生负向影响;(2)收入上涨增加了住房边际效用较高的低收入者对房价正向影响的权重,从而使住房需求上升的效应抵消了此前的负向影响,最终促进房价上涨。通过对1970-2017年44个国家的进一步分析发现,相比于高收入者收入的下降,低收入者收入占比的上升在放松信贷约束和提升房价方面具有更显著的作用。据此本文认为:一方面要通过增加住房供给来化解城市化率提升与高房价之间的内在矛盾;另一方面,在经济增速放缓的时期,缩小收入差距,推动以“人”为核心的高质量城市化,并引导信贷资源向低收入群体倾斜是当前促进国内大循环、稳定社会融资规模和房地产市场的重要手段。