Single-family housing transactions: Seller motivations, price, and marketing time

Factors such as relocation and financial distress motivate the seller of a single-family home to facilitate sale by posting a lower list price, communicating the motivations to the marketplace, or offering sales incentives to agents. Impacts of seller motivations on selling prices and marketing times are estimated using data for single-family homes sold in Arlington, Texas, from 1991 to 1993. Results show selling price discounts for houses with sellers who are either eager, motivated, or anxious, houses with sellers who have relocated, foreclosures, and vacant houses. Only foreclosure houses show the reduced marketing time expected for properties with motivated sellers. The results further suggest that the list price is the seller's primary mechanism for selling the property. Reducing the list price fosters faster sales at the sacrifice of the selling price.     

Seller Over-Pricing and Listing Contract Length: The Effects of Endogenous Listing Contracts on Housing Markets

This paper examines how seller pricing decisions influence listing contract length and how these decisions affect price and liquidity in housing markets. Because list price affects broker effort required to sell the property, brokers respond to seller overpricing by increasing the negotiated listing contract length. At the same time, sellers respond to longer listing contracts by adjusting their list price strategy. Both list price and length of marketing time affect broker sales effort and therefore a property’s realized selling price and liquidity. Analysis of house transaction data from Virginia indicates that greater over-pricing by sellers prompts brokers to pursue longer listing contracts, which subsequently lengthen marketing time but increase selling price. The results reveal a novel transmission mechanism from higher list price (which induces longer contracts) to selling price and liquidity.     

List price signaling and buyer behavior in the housing market

To determine whether list price contains useful information for anticipating trends in eventual transactions prices, we develop a model of buyer behavior from a search-theoretic perspective. Using data from the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, housing market between 1985 and 1992, we estimate separate price indexes with list price and selling price as the respective dependent variables in the hedonic regressions. Consistent with our theory, we find that the list price may lead the market when functioning as a signal of seller intent, but list price will probably lag a market driven by buyer willingness to purchase. Granger causality tests conducted on quarterly data for the eight-year study support listing price as a leading indicator of selling price. However, an examination of the indexes around the period of market reversal suggest otherwise. Indeed, listing prices appear to contain the least useful information at the times when information would be most valuable: at the peaks and troughs of the market cycle.     

The Hierarchical Trend Model for Property Valuation and Local Price Indices

This paper presents a hierarchical trend model (HTM) for selling prices of houses, addressing three main problems: the spatial and temporal dependence of selling prices and the dependency of price index changes on housing quality. In this model the general price trend, cluster-level price trends, and specific characteristics play a role. Every cluster, a combination of district and house type, has its own price development. The HTM is used for property valuation and for determining local price indices. Two applications are provided, one for the Breda region, and one for the Amsterdam region, lying respectively south and north in The Netherlands. For houses in these regions the accuracy of the valuation results are presented together with the price index results. Price indices based on the HTM are compared to a standard hedonic index and an index based on weighted median selling prices published by national brokerage organization. It is shown that, especially for small housing market segments the HTM produces price indices which are more accurate, detailed, and up-to-date.     

Housing prices and the optimal time-on-the-market decision

This paper provides a model for housing prices based on a seller solving the optimal time-on-the market problem. Given the seller’s optimal time-on-the market, analytical expressions are provided for both the expected time-on-the-market and the sales price. These expressions facilitate the computation of comparative statics. Consistent with economic intuition, we show that (i) both the expected time-on-the market and sales price decrease as interest rates increase, (ii) the expected time-on-the market increases and the expected sales price decreases as offer activity declines, and (iii) the expected time-on-the market and expected sales price both increase as the list price increases.     

Buyers' and sellers' agents in the housing market

We explain why buyers in the housing market use an agent employed by the seller. Such agents reduce buyers' search costs so that more buyers search a particular house. This increases the probability of the sale of the house and possibly also its selling price. However, since the selling price increases, if at all, by less than the fee paid by the seller to the agent, both buyers and sellers are better off. We identify two characteristics that give rise to sellers' agents and show that markets that do not have such agents are missing at least one of these characteristics.     

Alternative Methods of Increasing the Precision of Weighted Repeat Sales House Prices Indices

Weighted repeat sales house price indices have become one of the primary indicators used to identify housing market conditions and to estimate the amount of equity homeowners have gained through house price appreciation. The primary reason for the acceptance of this methodology is that it derives a location specific (typically, census division, state or metropolitan area) average change in house prices from repeated observations of individual house prices. It is this repeat attribute that allows repeat sales price indices to claim that it is a preferable index which does a better job of holding quality constant. The amount of time between the two observed prices for a single property is determined by when the home transacts. Some homes transact twice in a period of months and others do not transact for decades. It is likely that individual house price appreciation rates vary from the mean appreciation rate, as estimated by the index, in a systematic fashion. In general, the longer the time between transactions the more variance there is in individual house price appreciation. This paper extends this concept to include new dimensions. For instance, houses that appreciate faster than the mean, as estimated by the index for that location, may experience a different variation structure than homes that appreciate slower. This process can be viewed as an asymmetric treatment of the variance of house price appreciation around the estimated index. In addition, the variance of expensive and affordable homes may also be different and time varying. This paper finds evidence that adding the dimensions of price tiers and asymmetry to the variance estimate has merit and does affect the estimated index as well as homeowner equity estimates. Homeowner equity estimates are especially sensitive to these added dimensions because they depend on both the revised index and the estimated variances, which are specific to each dimension considered—time between transaction, asymmetry, and price tier.     

基于VAR模型对CPI与房地产价格关系的实证分析

随着经济的不断发展,物价波动与房地产价格之间的关系逐渐成为关注的焦点。本文选取我国2006年1月至2010年12月的CPI和房屋销售价格指数月度数据,建立VAR模型。通过格兰杰因果检验发现:房地产价格和物价波动之间存在单向的因果关系。通过脉冲响应函数进行分析,表明房屋销售价格指数对CPI有着正向的作用。方差分解的结果说明在长期CPI的变动很大程度是由房屋销售价格指数引起的,房地产市场价格波动受自身因素的影响较大。     

Signaling effects of recurrent list-price reductions on the likelihood of house sales

Recurrent list-price reductions for a house may signal the impatience of sellers to conclude a sell transaction more quickly, leading to more visits and a higher likelihood of being sold (positive signal). Recurrent list-price reductions may also provide a market signal that the listing is problematic and thus harder to sell without a list-price reduction, leading to a lower likelihood of being sold (negative signal). Unlike standard survival analysis, we investigate which signal prevails using a joint frailty model that accounts for the interdependence among recurrent list-price reductions and the association between the recurrent reductions and the sold event. Our novel data set contains the time-dated recurrent list-price reductions for each house listed on the market. The results from the joint frailty model show time-varying negative impacts of list-price reductions on the likelihood of a house sale, supporting the dominance of the negative signaling effects of recurrent list-price reductions. Although listings with frequent list-price reductions are less likely to be sold, sold houses sell at a higher ratio of sold price to last list price, which incorporates current market conditions and fairer pricing, holding constant the initial list price and the aggregate list-price reduction from the initial list price.     

Home Price,Time-on-Market,and Seller Heterogeneity Under Changing Market Conditions

This paper develops a formal model to examine the effect of changing market conditions and individuals’ selling constraints on selling price and time-on-market. Using the concept of Relative Liquidity Constraint (RLC)—a stochastic variable that captures the randomness of future individual constraints and market conditions—the study presents the first ex ante analysis that extends the investigation of the issue of seller heterogeneity to the point of the buying decision, that is, from the perspective of the buyer’s (future seller’s) point of view. We show that seller constraint, as well as the uncertainty of such a constraint, significantly depresses the expected selling price and increases risk. Our closed-form formulas provide a set of simple quantitative tools that enable buyers and sellers to adjust the “market average” to their ex ante “individual expectations”.     

Integrating auction and search markets: The slow Dutch auction

The issue of choosing to sell property by auction or by traditional negotiated search markets is addressed in this article. A general selling institution called the slow Dutch auction is introduced. This general selling mechanism reduces to either a conventional auction, a posted offer, or some time dependent mix of these selling institutions depending on the pricing rule chosen by the seller. We model search by having potential buyers whose private valuation for the property is unknown to the seller arrive randomly over time. With this general framework the seller's problem is to choose a selling mechanism that maximizes expected wealth. Surprisingly, we find that the optimal selling institution is always a posted offer market. The seller chooses an optimal posted price and waits until a buyer arrives who is willing to pay this price. Auctions are never optimal.     

开征物业税对房地产巿场的影响——基于省际面板数据的分析

从理论方面分析开征物业税对房地产市场的影响可以看出,物业税对房地产市场的短期影响是降低房价,而长期影响则不显著;实证方面,以1999~2008年我国30个省份的面板数据为样本,对商品房价格与拟开征物业税之间的相关关系做进一步研究的结果表明,房地产市场价格与物业税之间存在负相关关系,且开征物业税对不同地区房地产价格的影响存在差异。因此,与现行房地产税相比,物业税的开征会对房价起到更明显的抑制作用,可以缓解房地产市场过热,抑制房地产市场泡沫,有利于实现房地产市场的良性运作。     

Evidence of Information Asymmetries in the Market for Residential Condominiums

Previous research (Rutherford et al. 2005; Levitt and Syverson 2005) identify and quantify agency problems in the brokerage of single-family houses. Real estate agents are found to receive a premium when selling their own houses in comparison to similar client-owned houses. Given the homogeneity of the condominium market in comparison to the single-family house market, we use a large sample of condominium transactions to examine if agency problems exist in the condominium market. Controlling for sample selection and endogeneity bias of the data, we find evidence for a similar price premium for agent-owned condominiums. In contrast to the results for single-family houses in the same geographic market, we find that agent-owned condominiums must stay on the market longer to receive a higher price.

The Dynamics of Location in Home Price

It is well established that house prices are dynamic. It is also axiomatic that location influences such selling prices, motivating our objective of incorporating spatial information in explaining the evolution of house prices over time. In this paper, we propose a rich class of spatio-temporal models under which each property is point referenced and its associated selling price modeled through a collection of temporally indexed spatial processes. Such modeling includes and extends all house price index models currently in the literature, and furthermore permits distinction between the effects of time and location. We study single family residential sales in two distinct submarkets of a metropolitan area and further categorize the data into single- and multiple-transaction observations. We find the spatial component is very important in explaining house price. Moreover, the relative homogeneity of homes within the submarket and the frequency with which homes sell affects the pattern of variation across space and time. Differences between single and repeat sale data are evident. The methodology is applicable to more general capital asset pricing when location is anticipated to be influential.     

Agent Change and Seller Bargaining Power: A Case of Principal Agent Problem in the Housing Market

When a seller hires an agent to sell his/her property, a successful outcome depends on the list price, marketing time, unobserved relative bargaining power of the buyers and sellers, and the effort levels of the seller and the seller’s agent. A divergence with respect to the list/transaction prices and the expected effort levels between seller and agent will create a principal-agent interest conflict. This conflict in some cases results in an agent change before the house is sold. The change will reduce the relative bargaining power of the seller, affecting the observed marketing time and transaction price. This study estimates the effects of an agent change on marketing time and transaction price after controlling for degree of overpricing, list-price revisions, marketing time, and endogenous selection bias. Our results show that: (1) on average, an agent change increases the marketing time by about 3 months and adversely affects the transaction price by about 2.7 %. Furthermore, we found that an agent change before the expiration of the listing contract, compared to that of after the expiration, has a smaller effect on the marketing time (2.3 vs. 3.8 months) and has a smaller transaction price discount (2.1 % vs. 4.2 %).     

The Price Impacts of Open Market Repurchase Trades

Abstract:  This paper analyzes a database of 60,000+ individual repurchase trades from the Toronto Stock Exchange. The average intraday price impact of repurchase trades is negative, since, because of execution rules, 60% are seller-initiated. Prices fall less following repurchase than matched non-repurchase trades—there is an abnormal price impact. We find evidence consistent with two hypotheses: repurchases provide price support, and the market learns that the shares are undervalued. Consistent with the latter, we find that repurchasing companies have superior timing. Share prices show abnormal losses (gains) before (after) the repurchase trades. We find no significant market reaction to the mandatory public disclosure of the trade details.     

The Effect of House Price on Stock Market Participation in China: Evidence from the CHFS Microdata

This is an empirical study on the effect of house price on stock market participation and its depths based on unique China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data in 2011 and 2013 including 36,213 sample households. We mainly found that, with an increase of one thousand RMB per square meter in macrohouse price, the probability to participate in the stock market will increase by 5.4% before controlling for wealth effect and 2.84% afterwards, indicating the existence of wealth effect. The participation depths of the stock-total asset ratio are expected to decrease by 0.23%, and absolute stock asset is observed to decrease by 5.8 thousand RMB in response to one thousand RMB increase of per square meter house price. The effect of house price on participation decision is also related to housing area, and the negative effect of house price on stock market participation depths gets more intense with the increase of the stock-total asset ratio.     

利率与股价之间的价格溢出效应与波动溢出效应

基于具有外生变量的二元VAR-MGARCH模型对中国货币市场利率和股价之间的关联进行了理论分析和实证研究。结果表明,利率和股价之间基本不存在价格溢出效应;货币市场利率和股价序列均表现出时变方差的特征和波动的持久性特征,货币市场和股市之间存在双向波动溢出效应;货币供给的正向冲击对利率的影响是正向的。     

Private-Value Auction Versus Posted-Price Selling: An Agent-Based Model Approach

An agent-based first-price private-value auction and an agent-based posted-price market are developed to compare these selling methods when buyers have private values. If the seller cannot impose a reserve price and has little uncertainty about the item's value, the seller's expected revenue is highest in the posted-price market. Otherwise, the seller is better off selling the item with the auction. Using a genetic algorithm and Monte Carlo integration solved the agent-based models quicker and provided more precise answers than solving models with particle swarm optimization and using the trapezoidal rule for numerical integration. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

房价预期与城镇居民家庭股市参与——理论探讨与微观经验证据

本文基于中国家庭金融调查数据,通过构建理论模型和实证检验分析了房价预期与家庭股市参与的关系,考察了行为金融偏差在房价预期影响股市参与过程中的作用,并根据背景风险、社会网络和户主特征进行异质性分析。结果表明:(1)房价上涨预期通过降低居民家庭的股票收益率预期和增加住房资产,进而降低居民家庭的股市参与概率和参与程度;(2)“心理账户”以及“有限关注”的存在显著弱化了房价上涨预期对家庭股市参与的负向作用;(3)房价上涨预期对股市参与概率和参与程度的负向作用在收入风险更高、健康状况更差、社会网络水平较低以及受教育程度偏低的家庭中更大。因此,稳定房价预期能够通过提升家庭股市参与,进而从需求角度促进股票市场的健康发展。