Rational Expectations, Market Fundamentals and Housing Price Volatility

This paper derives a forward-looking rational expectations house price model and empirically tests its ability to explain short-run fluctuations in real house prices. A novel approach to proxying the imputed rents of owner-occupied housing, as a function of observable housing market fundamentals, is combined with a housing market arbitrage relation to derive a present value model for real house prices. Tests of the rational expectations, nonlinear cross-equation restrictions reject the joint null hypothesis of rational expectations and the asset-based housing price model for quarterly, single-detached house prices in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia from 1979–1991. The model fails to fully capture observed house price dynamics in two real estate booms but tracks real house prices well in less volatile times, suggesting that prices may temporarily deviate from fundamental values in real estate price cycles.     

Anchoring under Currency Substitution: A Ratchet Price Mechanism in the Housing Market

The currency substitution experienced by the Israeli real estate market in the past decades serves as a unique case for studying the effect of the anchoring heuristic on prices. We hypothesize that players utilize current and past exchange rates between the old and new currency to affect the closing price in their favor. Results of micro‐ and macro‐level estimations indicate that exchange rate fluctuations associate with an upward ratchet price effect. Furthermore, we find that the ratchet price mechanism disappears once the currency substitution is completed. These findings provide new evidence of the effect of anchoring on a market whose transactions involve substantial, long‐term economic consequences.     

A Price Dispersion Equilibrium in a Spatially Differentiated Housing Market with Search Costs

An equilibrium model of search in a spatially differentiated rental housing market is formulated that predicts both rent dispersion and equilibrium vacancies. The equilibrium rent distribution is determined on the landlord's (rental supply) side given tenants' search strategies. Then tenants' optimal search strategy, denned by the share of the market a tenant searches, is determined given the costs and benefits of search and the distribution of landlords' rents. The equations of supply and demand for rental units are then combined to derive a costly information, free-entry Nash equilibrium in the market rents. Finally, the sensitivity of equilibrium vacancies and rents to changes in search costs and other exogenous parameters is explored.     

House Price Appreciation, Transactions and Structural Change in the British Housing Market: A Macroeconomic Perspective

This paper constitutes the first of two interrelated studies and is concerned with the relationship between house prices and transactions. Using aggregate time–series data, we find a strong relationship in Britain between the two variables, but the relationship changed during the 1990s. Transactions became much lower. We suggest that structural changes in macroeconomic relationships are increasingly likely to occur in a world of greater inequality and our results are one symptom. We argue that macroeconomic estimation needs to be complemented by careful microeconomic analysis. The second study, also appearing in this issue, therefore examines the microeconomic aspects of the issue.     

Optimal Pricing Strategy in the Case of Price Dispersion: New Evidence from the Tokyo Housing Market

We adopt a multistage search model, in which the home seller's reservation price is determined by her or his opportunity cost, search cost, discount rate and additional market parameters. The model indicates that a greater dispersion in offer prices leads to higher reservation and optimal asking prices. A unique dataset from the Tokyo condominium resale market enables us to test those modeled hypotheses. Empirical results indicate that a one percentage point increase in the standard deviation of submarket transaction prices results in a two‐tenths of a percent increase in the initial asking price and in the final transaction price. Increases in the dispersion of market prices enhance the probabilities of a successful transaction and/or an accelerated sale.     

Variation Across Price Segments and Locations: A Comprehensive Quantile Regression Analysis of the Sydney Housing Market

Standard house price indices measure average movements of average houses in average locations belonging to an average price segment and hence obscure spatial and cross‐sectional variation of price appreciation rates even within a single metropolitan area. This article combines penalized quantile regression techniques with the hedonic imputation approach to reveal such kind of variation. The method is applied to house transactions from Sydney between 2001 and 2014. The analysis finds significant variation across sub‐markets over time and in particular during the boom‐and‐bust cycle peaking in 2004. Appreciation rates were highest for suburban, low‐priced and lowest for inner‐city, high‐priced houses.     

Housing Renovations and the Quantile Repeat-Sales Price Index

A median-based quantile estimator suffers less bias from positive outliers, such as unobserved renovations, than a standard mean-based estimator. Quantile repeat-sales estimates for single-family homes in the city of Chicago show nominal price appreciation of 68.9% between 1993 and 2002, substantially smaller than the standard approach's estimate of 77.8%. Omitting observations with building permits reduces the mean and median-based estimates by 4.4 and 1.6 percentage points. The results imply that quality improvements account for much of the rapid rise in house prices, and that a median-based quantile estimator produces a more accurate view of the price performance of a typical house.     

Resale Externality and the Used Housing Market

The selling prices of used houses may not fully reflect the maintenance spending of current owners when prospective buyers are unable to conduct a thorough inspection before purchase. This article investigates how this resale externality problem affects the maintenance expenditures of homeowners. After considering both observable and unobservable repair expenses, the analysis shows that the resale externality reduces not only maintenance expenditures, but also household mobility. A treatment effects model is used to estimate the simultaneous relationship between mobility and maintenance in the Japanese resale housing market. The results indicate that the resale externality has a significant negative impact on maintenance expenditures.     

Housing Policy Implementation Effect Analysis in the Macro-control Round of Housing Market

为了解政府对住房市场宏观调控采取政策的执行效果,采用定性分析的方法对住房市场宏观调控中的金融、房贷和土地政策进行分析.在梳理总结各类政策的基础上,分析政策出台规律、政策实施效果以及造成市场现状的根源及深层次原因.结合政策特点和问题根源,提出相应的政策建议改善住房市场调控现状,建立住房市场宏观调控的长效机制.     

Commuting Costs and Geographic Sorting in the Housing Market

The demand for housing is heavily influenced by access to employment opportunities. The cost of gasoline determines, in part, the cost of such access and therefore the relative demand across markets with varying commuting needs. Locally exogenous gasoline price movements demonstrate the causal impact of higher fuel costs on housing markets: a shift of market demand toward real estate markets with less costly commutes. Higher fuel prices increase the value of real estate with shorter commutes and easier access to driving alternatives relative to more driving dependent homes. Every incremental $1 per gallon of gasoline reduces home values by 0.143% for every additional mile relative to counterfactual markets, or $5,200 for the average home and commute. This translates into a discount rate of 6.4%, comparable to mortgage rates for the period.     

Forecasting Prices and Excess Returns in the Housing Market

The paper uses quarterly indexes of existing single-family home prices estimated with microdata on properties that sold more than once to estimate excess returns to investment in owner-occupied housing. Housing prices and excess returns are estimated over the period 1970:1 to 1986:3 for Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco. Using time-series cross-section regressions we test for the forecastability of prices and excess returns using a number of independent variables. Price changes in one year tend to continue for more than one year in the same direction. The ratio of construction costs to price, changes in adult population and increases in real per capita income all are positively related to excess returns or price changes over the subsequent year. The results add weight to the argument that the market for single-family homes is inefficient.     

Contigent Price Contracts and the Efficiency of Housing Markets

Frequently, the response of housing markets to a large negative demand shock is a period during which the liquidity of housing declines, but the price at which transactions take place changes little. In this paper we show that a decline in liquidity can result from the inabilities of sellers and buyers to insure against post-shock price uncertainty. We conclude, that the introduction of a risk-sharing contingent price contract may increase the post-shock liquidity of housing by providing insurance against post-shock price uncertainty. Finally, we show that a mutually agreeable contingent price contract will always exist, even when sellers are excessively optimistic.     

Housing Price Volatility Changes and Their Effects

We examine significant volatility shifts in regional housing price changes, adapting a method of Haugen, Talmor and Torous (1991) independent of predefined sampling blocks. We identify 36 volatility events, most of which are purely regional, but three of which are national. We find significant associations of volatility events and economic conditions, especially national and regional income growth, inflation, and interest rates. During an initial adjustment period after a volatility shift, realized housing returns move opposite to volatility. We find evidence of significant interregional diffusion of volatility increases, but not of decreases. New insights on links between economic conditions and housing volatility and returns should be of value to household investors and mortgage investors.     

The Resale Housing Market

This paper describes and analyzes the structure and operation of the market for existing single-family homes. The paper develops aggregative models of sales and renovation activity based on the adjustment choice decisions of households to alter their housing consumption by moving or by undertaking renovations. The models demonstrate that housing resales and renovation expenditures occur when the present value of the gains associated with a housing adjustment exceeds the costs of the transaction. The choice of the adjustment mode is shown to be significantly influenced by the relative transactions costs of moving versus renovating.     

住宅消费公平价格与商品住宅性能认定

本通过对影响住宅消费公平价格形成的因素进行分析，并联系商品住宅性能认定制度，阐述了四类因素对住宅消费公平价格形成的影响和与性能认定的联系。对性能认定中存在的问题提出了建议。     

Risk and Return within the Single-Family Housing Market

The trade-off between risk and return in equity markets is well established. This paper examines the existence of the same trade-off in the single-family housing market. That market is dominated by homeowners, who constitute about two-thirds of U.S. households. For them the choice about how much housing and what house to buy is a joint consumption-investment decision. Furthermore, owner-occupied housing is by nature a lumpy investment whose risk cannot be completely diversified. Does this consumption-investment link negate the risk-return trade-off within the single-family housing market? Theory suggests the link still holds. This paper supplies empirical evidence in support of that theoretical result.     

Time on the Market and Selling Price

This study is primarily an analysis of tradeoff between selling time and price, both on a nominal and real basis. Sellers are seen as desiring to maximize their discounted real selling price and trading off the nominal selling price with expected selling time. The time a property remains on the market is important, not only because of its reflection on price, but also because of its possible reflection on the issue of submarket equilibrium—an assumption in most urban price studies. The empirical results of this study shed light on how similar studies can easily misinterpret the implications of time on the market on price and how further work may be improved.     

Housing Price Indexes from the 1974–1983 SIMSA Annual Housing Surveys

This paper reports residential real estate price indexes computed from the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) Annual Housing Survey (AHS) for the 1974 through 1983 period. During this ten-year period, the U.S. Bureau of the Census conducted detailed surveys of the housing stock in sixty metropolitan areas in a three to four year cycle. This information is used to compute tenure specific hedonic housing price indexes for: (1) the entire metropolitan housing market; (2) separately for properties located in the central city and in the suburbs (whenever central city locations are identified); and (3) for three points in the dwelling quality distribution-for substandard housing (using the definition employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development), for new housing (housing less than three years old and not substandard), and for existing standard quality housing (everything else). In addition, the hedonic prices reported here are adjusted for the finite sample bias introduced when taking the exponential of a lognormally distributed random variable.     

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.