The burgeoning role of iBuyers in the housing market

We examine the iBuyers’ business model and their impact on housing markets. We find that iBuyers tend to enter neighborhoods that have more easily priced and homogeneous homes, as price discovery is simpler and more consistent with their pricing algorithm in those areas. iBuyers purchase homes at lower prices than individual owner-occupiers, and this acquisition discount reflects the benefits iBuyers offer to motivated sellers rather than distressed home purchases or unobserved lower-quality housing characteristics. Last, a greater presence of iBuyers results in a higher volume of local housing transactions and encourages more home sellers to sell without listing.     

A Simple Search and Bargaining Model of Real Estate Markets

This paper examines the impact of brokers on buyers' and sellers' search behavior and on the transaction prices in real estate markets. It is shown that the seller and the buyer search less intensively if the house is listed with a broker. The seller gets a higher price when he employs a broker, but the increase in price is smaller than the commission fee. More specifically, the portion of the commission covered by the increase in price is directly related to the bargaining powers of the buyer and the seller. In the special case where the price is determined according to the Nash bargaining solution, the increase in price is shown to be half of the commission fee. It is also shown that an increase in the commission rate increases the equilibrium price but decreases the equilibrium search intensities.     

Estimating Bargaining Effects in Hedonic Models: Evidence from the Housing Market

Bargaining is common in markets for heterogeneous goods and differences in bargaining power between buyer and seller affect the negotiated transaction price. Previous research has found systematic evidence in the housing markets that weak buyers pay higher prices and weak sellers receive lower prices for their homes. Earlier work has modeled the bargaining effect as a parallel shift in the hedonic function, implicitly assuming that attribute shadow prices were unaffected by the bargaining process. In this paper, we use a sample of home sales where the seller's bargaining power is weakened by the fact that the home is vacant at the time of sale to test whether the effect of bargaining is best captured by a shift in the hedonic constant or whether the attribute shadow prices vary as well. The question is significant for property valuation where estimation of the marginal value of an attribute is commonly used to adjust comparable sales data. We find strong confirmation that bargaining power influences the negotiated price. We also find evidence that bargaining power alters attribute prices, although we do not find a consistent pattern across markets.     

Selling Time and Selling Price: The Influence of Seller Motivation

We consider the role that seller motivation plays in determining selling time, list price and sale price. A new survey of home sellers suggests that sellers are heterogeneous in their motivation to sell. Our findings are that a seller who, at the time of listing, has a planned date to move sells more quickly than one who does not. Also, the shorter the planned time until a move at the time of listing, the shorter the actual duration of marketing time. We find that seller motivation affects sale price, but not the list-price markup. Our results suggest that theoretical models of the housing search process should be recast to allow for heterogeneous sellers.     

House Prices and Inflation

The present paper examines the long-run impact of inflation on homeowner equity by investigating the relationship between house prices and the prices of nonhousing goods and services, rather than return series and inflation rates as in previous empirical studies on the inflation hedging ability of real estate. There are two reasons for this methodological departure from prior practice: (1) while the total return on housing cannot be accurately measured, the total return on housing is fully reflected in housing prices, and (2) given that using returns or differencing a time series leads to a loss of long-run information contained in the series, valuable long-run information can be captured by using prices. Also, unlike previous related studies, we exclude housing costs from goods and services prices to avoid potential bias in estimating how inflation affects housing prices. Monthly data series are collected for existing and for new house prices as well as the consumer price index excluding housing costs for the period 1968–2000. Based on both autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models and recursive regressions, the empirical results yield estimated Fisher coefficients that are consistently greater than one over the sample period. Thus, we infer that house prices are a stable inflation hedge in the long run.     

Housing Market Conditions, Listing Choice and MLS Market Share

In some housing markets, a seller may hire a broker to multiple list or exclusively list a property for sale or may bypass the brokerage industry and list the property privately as a "sale by owner." This article introduces a new model that illustrates the factors which will impact on the broker's and seller's preferred type of listing. An implication of the model is that if the choice is available, sellers and real estate brokers will employ a multiple listing service more often during slower market periods where the volume of sales is low and properties are more difficult to sell. An empirical analysis of Vancouver data yields results consistent with these arguments.     

The Impact of Growth Control Regulations on Housing Prices in California*

This paper examines the impact of growth controls on the price of new single-family homes. Four types of growth controls are discussed and each is found to have a significantly different impact on housing prices. Regulations that are imposed by one locality only are first compared to those that are imposed by a locality whose neighbors also control growth. In California, increases in house prices in communities with only local growth controls cannot be distinguished from communities that do not control growth. However, the 1969 to 1976 housing price increase in growth control jurisdictions located in extensively regulated housing markets is significantly higher than in local-only or no-control jurisdictions. In addition, controls that restrict the rate of development are compared to those that specify the quality of development. In the extensively regulated San Francisco Bay area, the 1969 to 1976 housing price increase was 35% higher in rate-controlled communities and 20% higher in quality-controlled communities than in no-control communities.     

The Relationship between Median and Constant Quality House Prices: Implications for Setting FHA Loan Limits

This paper examines the relationship between the asset price of housing and median sales price. We demonstrate: (1) median house prices (as reported by the National Association of Realtors) overstate the increase in constant-quality house prices by about 2% per year over the 1976–1985 period; and (2) regional differences in median house prices and their rates of increase, respectively, are systematically related to regional differences in real incomes and their rates of increase. We use these results to evaluate the recent proposal to raise the FHA maximum loan limit ceiling from the current ceiling of $124,750 to 95% of the area median house price.     

Ethnicity in housing markets: Buyers,sellers and agents

This paper examines how ethnicity related to cultural differences arising from ethnic background affects housing market transactions in the Atlanta metro area. Using both the US Census and Wikipedia approaches to infer ethnicity from individuals' names, we find that the interplay of buyer, seller, and agent ethnicity composition affects interaction in the housing market. Sellers working with listing agents in the same ethnic group set higher listing prices and enjoy higher selling prices and quicker sales. Agents working with same ethnicity buyers yield higher prices and liquidity. Even though sellers only communicate with buyers through their agents, houses sold by sellers to buyers of same ethnicity have higher prices and sell faster. And while the ethnic mix of agents and their clients matter, the ethnic mix of agents in the transaction does not.     

Internet Search Behavior,Liquidity and Prices in the Housing Market

We employ detailed internet search data to examine price and liquidity dynamics of the Dutch housing market. We show that the number of clicks on properties listed online proxies demand and the number of listed properties proxies supply. From this internet search behavior, we create a market tightness indicator and we find that this indicator Granger causes changes in both house prices and housing market liquidity. The results of a panel VAR suggest that a demand shock results in a temporary increase in liquidity and a permanent increase in prices in urban areas. This is in accordance with search and matching models.     

Retail Mergers and Food Prices: Evidence from France

This paper analyzes the impact of a merger in the French supermarket industry on food prices. Using consumer panel data, we compare the changes in prices for merging and rival firms in affected and comparison markets. We use a novel definition of affected markets when some firms have a local pricing strategy and others a more centralized pricing strategy. We find that prices increase significantly following the merger, and that the merging firms lose market shares. For the rivals, the price increases are larger in local markets, in which concentration increased and differentiation changed after the merger.     

On the Nature of Self‐Assessed House Prices

In models of optimal household behavior, the value of housing affects consumption, savings and other variables. But homeowners do not know the value of their house for certain until they sell, so while they live in their home they must rely on local house price data to estimate its value. This article uses data from the recent housing boom and bust to demonstrate that changes in households' self‐assessed home values are strongly consistent with the predictions of a model in which households optimally filter available house price data. Specifically, we show that self‐assessed house prices did not increase as rapidly as house price indexes during the boom and did not decline as severely during the bust. A Kalman filter model nearly perfectly replicates these data. These findings have direct implications for economists studying asking prices during booms and busts, optimal default decisions and other key housing‐related phenomena.     

Matching of Buyers and Sellers by Brokers: A Comparison of Alternative Commission Structures

This note characterizes the set of Pareto optimal and stable matchings among buyers and sellers and examines the optimality of matching strategies employed by brokers under different commission structures. It is shown that the profit-maximizing matching strategy for the broker under percentage commission and flat-fee systems also maximizes the number of houses sold, but it minimizes the buyers' and sellers' surplus. On the other hand, net listing results in the sale of fewer houses, but it yields larger surplus for buyers and sellers.     

The Housing Market and Real Estate Brokers

The major development in this paper concerns the failure, in earlier studies, to consider interaction between alternative methods of arranging sales in the housing market. A seller may market a house by direct negotiations with buyers, without the intermediation of real estate brokers, or by listing the house with a broker. A rational seller would choose the option which offers the higher expected return on the house. In a sequence of models we argue that the seller's option of a method of sale induces competitive pressure in the choice of the commission rate by the broker. We also consider the split rate in a multiple listing system, ease of entry of brokers and the cartel hypothesis as applied to brokers. We conclude that the competitive pressure of direct negotiations between sellers and buyers, relative free entry of brokers and the inappropri-ateness of the cartel hypothesis cast serious doubt about a general consensus of opinion that the brokerage system is characterized by price fixing, excessive commissions and excessive marketing costs.     

House Price Changes and Idiosyncratic Risk: The Impact of Property Characteristics

Although the average change in house prices is related to changes in fundamentals or perhaps market-wide bubbles, not all houses in a market appreciate at the same rate. The primary focus of our study is to investigate the reasons for these variations in price changes among houses within a market. We draw on three theories for guidance, one related to the optimal search strategy for sellers of atypical dwellings, another focusing on the bargaining process between a seller and potential buyers and the third relying on the concept of land leverage. We hypothesize that houses will appreciate at different rates depending on the characteristics of the property and the change in the strength of the housing market. These hypotheses are supported using data from three New Zealand housing markets.     

Border Effects in House Prices

This article estimates the effect of the Dutch–German border on house prices. We argue that the difference between house prices at the border indicates the willingness to pay to stay in a country compared to living across the border. After a change in the tax rules in 2001, migration from the Netherlands to Germany increased substantially and the gradient of Dutch house price towards the German border steepened. Combining a German and Dutch real estate dataset and using different estimation strategies, we find that asking prices of comparable housing drop by about 16% when one crosses the Dutch–German border.     

Market Mechanism Choice and Real Estate Disposition: Search Versus Auction

We propose a model of mechanism choice in the disposition of real estate assets where we consider two alternatives: a search market and an auction. Within the search framework, we derive an equilibrium whereby buyers incur search costs and sellers incur holding costs for the period during which the property is not sold. In the auction alternative, the seller joins an existing pool of sellers in undertaking a multiple–object auction and pays a commission upon sale. Buyers and sellers freely choose their mechanisms, which in equilibrium are optimal given each group's conjectures about the mechanism choice of their counterpart. In equilibrium, an agent cannot benefit from deviating from his choice and each agent's beliefs are consistent with the equilibrium outcome. It is shown that (a) buyers with high search costs will choose auctions because the auction payoff imposes an upper bound on buyers' gains from search, and (b) prices at auctions will be higher. Using vacant lot sales data and a method–of–moment estimator which accounts for the presence of an endogenous discrete mechanism choice variable, we estimated a hedonic regression to detect the price effect. It was determined that, on average, lots sold for $1.44 per square foot more in auctions than in the search market, as predicted by our model.     

Deed Types, House Prices and Mortgage Interest Rates

When houses are sold they come with a deed attached that spells out the legal guarantees on good title. Some deeds give clues about the characteristics of the seller or the house. Using a 37,043-observation house price hedonic with a Bayesian spatial error model, we find the type of deed attached to a housing sale can have a dramatic correlation with the sale price. Ten deed types command a discount, and one commands a premium relative to warranty deeds. Mortgage rates for sheriff's deeds and foreclosure deeds are lower than for warranty deeds, indicating more sophisticated buyers.     

Discount Brokerage in Residential Real Estate Markets

Transaction costs are thought to affect asset prices and market liquidity, but the direction and magnitude of these effects continue to be the subject of debate. In the single‐family residential market, discount brokers offer to list a house for a lower price and thus reduce the transaction costs associated with obtaining a match. In this article we obtain empirical estimates of the price and liquidity impact of a seller selecting a discount broker to market a single‐family residential property. The unique data set allows for the identification of residential properties that were listed by a discount brokerage firm. The empirical results confirm the predictions of our theoretical model. Using a sample of 318,221 listings and 243,625 sales, we find that houses listed by discount brokers sell at prices similar to non‐discount brokerage listings, but are less likely to sell, and when they do sell, take approximately three days longer to sell. The results indicate that lower transaction costs do not impact housing prices in this market, but that they are related to asset liquidity.     

Do House Price Levels Anticipate Subsequent Price Changes within Metropolitan Areas?

This research examines the relationship between hedonically controlled housing price levels and subsequent changes in those prices across locations within MSAs. Are areas with a high price relative to an “imputed rent” paying for higher appreciation? In an efficient market (e.g., Gordon Growth Model), as fundamentals (impute rent) differ across locations and change over time, anticipation of these should generate a positive correlation between (residual) price levels and subsequent price changes. We undertake these tests in four different MSAs using a panel of repeat‐sale house price indices that have been scaled to price levels with the hedonic attributes of the house and ZIP code. In three markets we find that identical houses in higher priced ZIP codes subsequently appreciate faster. In one market we find that there is little statistical difference.