Risk and Return in the U.S. Housing Market: A Cross-Sectional Asset-Pricing Approach

This article carries out an asset-pricing analysis of the U.S. metropolitan housing market. We use ZIP code–level housing data to study the cross-sectional role of volatility, price level, stock market risk and idiosyncratic volatility in explaining housing returns. While the related literature tends to focus on the dynamic role of volatility and housing returns within submarkets over time, our risk–return analysis is cross-sectional and covers the national U.S. metropolitan housing market. The study provides a number of important findings on the asset-pricing features of the U.S. housing market. Specifically, we find (i) a positive relation between housing returns and volatility, with returns rising by 2.48% annually for a 10% rise in volatility, (ii) a positive but diminishing price effect on returns and (iii) that stock market risk is priced directionally in the housing market. Our results on the return-volatility-price relation are robust to (i) metropolitan statistical area clustering effects and (ii) differences in socioeconomic characteristics among submarkets related to income, employment rate, managerial employment, owner-occupied housing, gross rent and population density.     

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.     

Marking Single–Family Property Values to Market

This paper is the text of the 2001 Presidential Address for the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. House price prediction accuracy is a function of: (1) the procedure used to identify within–metropolitan–area housing submarket boundaries, (2) the econometric technique used to estimate the parameters of the house price model and (3) the characteristics of the local housing market. This paper empirically examines several procedures for delineating within–metropolitan–area housing submarket boundaries. In addition, the paper examines the increase in prediction accuracy that can be achieved by employing spatial econometric techniques to spatially adjust ordinary least squares house price predictions. Finally, the paper examines the influence that local housing market characteristics have on house price prediction accuracy. Housing market characteristics examined here are: (1) structural characteristics of neighborhood properties, (2) heterogeneity of the neighborhood housing stock and (3) housing market liquidity. Prediction accuracy is examined using hedonic house price equations with over 40,000 single–family transactions for Dallas, Texas.     

Idiosyncratic Risk of House Prices: Evidence from 26 Million Home Sales

This paper uses about 26 million home sales to measure house price idiosyncratic risk for 7,580 U.S. zip codes during three periods: (1) when the U.S. housing market was stable (1996–2000), (2) booming (2001–2007) and (3) busting (2007–2012), and investigates the determinants of house price risk. We find very strong relationships between risk and some basic housing market characteristics. There is a U‐shaped relationship between risk and zip‐code level median household income; risk is higher in zip codes with more appreciation volatility; and risk is not compensated with higher appreciation.     

House Prices and Regional Real Estate Cycles: Market Adjustments in Houston

Real estate cycles often generate sharp swings in real housing prices, price changes that cannot be adequately described by a single statistic such as median home values. Instead, the entire structure of prices across all quality levels must be examined. This paper analyzes the price impact of the Houston, Texas, real estate bust. It shows that the average price of housing fell, and that the structure of the housing price function itself changed. Changes in the marginal price of housing were probably more significant to the market equilibrating process than the decline in average price alone.     

Modeling Spatial Variation in Housing Prices: A Variable Interaction Approach

The absolute location of each real estate parcel in an urban housing market has a unique location-value signature. Accessibility indices, distant gradients and locational dummies cannot fully account for the influence of absolute location on the market price of housing because there are an indeterminable number of externalities (local and nonlocal) influencing a given property at a given location. Furthermore, the degree to which externalities affect real estate values is not only unique at each location but highly variable over space. Hence, absolute location must be viewed as interactive with other determinants of housing value. We present an interactive variables approach and test its ability to explain price variations in an urban residential housing market. The statistical evidence suggests that the value of location, as embodied in the selling price of housing units, may not be separable from other determinants of value. It is recommended that housing valuation models, therefore, be specified to allow site, structural and other independent attributes to interact with absolute location—{ x , y } coordinates—when accounting for intraurban variation in the market price of residential housing. This approach is especially useful when estimating the value of housing for geographic areas where very little is known a priori about the neighborhoods or submarkets.     

基于中国市场的房地产期权研究

面对日渐繁荣的中国房地产市场,房价涨幅过快、过高已经是一个不容回避的问题。房地产期权作为一种创新型投资理财工具,在欧美和亚洲金融衍生品市场几乎完全空白,能够有效对冲房价过快上涨的风险,改变中国购房者传统购房观念,间接缓解房地产价格过快上涨的压力。本文基于中国市场对以房地产价格为标的物的期权产品进行研究,以西安市房地产市场为例进行模拟分析,结果表明,房地产期权可以满足普通购房者对冲房价过快上涨的避险需求,转变传统购房观念,缓解短期购房压力,降低房地产市场的整体风险,在一定程度上促进房地产市场平稳有序的发展,具有十分显著的现实应用价值。     

基于挤出效应的住房保障规模对商品住房价格的影响

中国房地产市场中保障性住房的角色和作用愈加重要,保障性住房建设规模正在逐年扩大.商品住房价格变化是供给需求作用的结果,但是随着保障房供给规模的增加,商品住房价格的涨幅也会发生改变,说明保障房的供给规模会对普通商品房的供需产生影响.本文以北京市商品住房市场为例,选取住宅需求、住宅供给、住房投机对价格的影响为自变量,住宅价格为因变量,利用多元回归模型对商品住房价格变化进行实证研究,同时通过考虑保障房供给对住房市场产生的不同挤出效应,分析保障房供给规模供需变化对房价产生的影响,进而为政府制定相关的住房保障政策提供建议和对策.     

How Do Land Auction Formats Influence the Market Structure and Aggregate Surplus of Real Estate Development?

This article proposes a duopoly dynamic game theoretic model to investigate the market structure and aggregate surplus of real estate development when land is sold in a sealed‐bid first price auction vis‐à‐vis an open English auction. It relaxes the assumption of symmetric bidders. The land values have common value and private value components. We find that the sealed‐bid first price auction introduces competition in the real estate development market. The open English auction leads a monopoly market. State agencies are recommended to increase the aggregate surplus of real estate development by publishing past bidding information under the sealed‐bid first price auction and reducing information asymmetry between bidders.     

Flooding and Liquidity on the Bayou: The Capitalization of Flood Risk into House Value and Ease‐of‐Sale

The existing literature focuses on how perceived flood risk affects house value. Search theory, however, implies that flood risks will be capitalized into both house price and liquidity. This article draws on search theory to develop an empirical approach for estimating flood risk capitalization into both price and selling time. The results show the mix of price and liquidity capitalization varies by level of flood risk as well as across housing market phases. Regardless of the specific capitalization pattern, the results illustrate that focusing solely on price without allowing for concomitant liquidity capitalization can yield estimates that understate the full impact of flood risk on house transactions.     

工程担保制度促进合理低价法全面推广

工程招投标过程中评标办法是影响最终结果“公正、公平、公开”的关键环节。实践证明,推行合理低价法是市场竞争和发展方向的要求,符合社会生产力和市场竞争机制。全面推行、普及合理低价法评定标,需要一系列配套制度来保障,工程建设合同担保制度的出台,对合理低价法推行过程出现的问题,起到了保驾护航的作用,必将会推动合理低价法更加广泛应用。     

基于等风险图和模糊综合评价法的投标报价风险分析

建筑企业在投标时对工程实际资料掌握的广度和深度非常有限，据此得出的投标报价是一个期望价格。实际施工时可能出现的种种不确定性因素（如恶劣的天气等）会导致工程实际造价高于投标报价，即投标存在风险。针对建筑企业在投标报价中所面临的各种风险因素，以概率估计和模糊数学分析理论相结合，研究这些风险发生的概率以及对项目收益产生的影响，以风险量值来衡量投标报价的风险值，为建筑企业投标提供新的决策依据。     

Metaheuristic-based simulation optimization approach to network revenue management with an improved self-adjusting bid price function

Making accurate accept/reject decisions on dynamically arriving customer requests for different combinations of resources is a challenging task under uncertainty of competitors' pricing strategies. Because customer demand may be affected by a competitor's pricing action, changes in customer interarrival times should also be considered in capacity control procedures. In this article, a simulation model is developed for a bid price–based capacity control problem of an airline network revenue management system by considering the uncertain nature of booking cancellations and competitors' pricing strategy. An improved bid price function is proposed by considering competitors' different pricing scenarios that occur with different probabilities and their effects on the customers' demands. The classical deterministic linear program (DLP) is reformulated to determine the initial base bid prices that are utilized as control parameters in the proposed self-adjusting bid price function. Furthermore, a simulation optimization approach is applied in order to determine the appropriate values of the coefficients in the bid price function. Different evolutionary computation techniques such as differential evolution (DE), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and seeker optimization algorithm (SOA), are utilized to determine these coefficients along with comparisons. The computational experiments show that promising results can be obtained by making use of the proposed metaheuristic-based simulation optimization approach.     

施工方案措施的选取对最高投标限价影响研究

国有资金投资的建设工程招标,必须编制招标控制价(最高投标限价)[1],概预算定额在今后相当长的一段时间内还是最高投标限价的编制基础,估算指标还处于不断补充、不断更新的过程,有的地方甚至缺乏完整的体系.在完善工程计价依据,加强工程造价数据积累及施工合同履约管理的过程中,工程招标投标及最高投标限价如何自主报价、竞争定价成为...     

Housing Attributes Associated with Capital Gain

Housing units are heterogeneous goods. Rates of change in housing prices are typically modelled as if they arise from factors unrelated to the housing unit itself. For example, housing price increases in the latter part of the 1970s and early 1980s are argued to have arisen primarily from demographic factors and the differential effects of inflation on the effective rate of taxation on income from corporate capital and on owner-occupied housing. Cross-sectional variation in price inflation is not addressed. Consumers who purchased housing units are not indifferent to their attributes. To the extent that expectations vary within regional housing markets as a consequence of variation in housing attributes, standard linear hedonic price regression may generate biased estimates of implicit prices. This paper identifies sufficient conditions for the estimates of implicit prices in linear hedonic price regressions to be unbiased and generate unbiased estimates of implied price changes. Finally, this paper identifies living space (house size) as a significant attribute related positively to the increase in individual housing prices in a regional market.     

Graduated Flood Risks and Property Prices in Galveston County

Our hedonic property analysis approach in Galveston County, Texas aims at estimating the impacts of flood risks and water‐related amenities in a more systematic way. First, we interact distance to the nearest coastline and flood risk in order to account for these impacts acting together on housing sales prices in our coastal community. Second, we use more granular flood risk measure in the analysis compared to the existing literature. Results show that the hedonic price effect is dependent upon the distance to the nearest coastline, and as expected the distance effect varies by flood risk type. We find that in this coastal housing market properties located in the highest risk flood area, for up to nearly a quarter mile from the nearest coastline, actually command a price premium. A recent movement toward risk‐based flood insurance premiums in the United States was deeply opposed by the real estate sector for fear of causing property values to steeply decline. This analysis sheds some further light on this depressed property value assertion highlighting its sensitivity to distance to the water.     

The Investment in Housing As a Forward Market Transaction: Implications for Tenure Choice and Portfolio Selection

A model of tenure choice is presented which treats the benefits and costs of homeownership from a theory of finance perspective. The incremental benefits from homeownership over renting housing services are from two sources: protection against rental price risk (a forward transaction in the housing market) and from a possible capital gain from the eventual sale of a house (substitutes for portfolio investment). The cost of these benefits is higher initial outlay on housing, which reduces the funds available for portfolio investments. The comparative statics of this model is presented. It is shown that rental risk and portfolio risk add to the value of homeownership. Since homeownership is a partial substitute for portfolio investment, it is shown that the lower the covariance between portfolio returns and future home prices the more valuable is homeownership. In the presence of differential borrowing opportunities it is shown that the leverage available to housing significantly increases the value of homeownership.     

Strommarktdesign: Zur Ausgestaltung der Auktionsregeln an der EEX

This paper studies the design of power exchanges in liberalized electricty markets. We analyze several pricing rules for day ahead trading and show that a uniform price mechanism has quite desirable properties as compared to its alternatives. We then discuss how the particular cost structure of electricity generation can be accounted for by appropriate bid formats. We moreover analyze the effects of bid caps and price floors in electricity auctions on market performance, as well as several other aspects of electricity market design. In particular, we discuss linkage of independently operating markets for electricity, reserve energy and transmission capacities, coupling of national power exchanges, and the effects of transparency on the outcome of electricity markets.     

Urban Housing Markets Modelling: Short-Run Equilibrium Implications

This paper tests for the existence of short-run equilibrium in the urban housing market in Metropolitan Toronto. The alternative hypothesis is the housing market segmented with respect to locational and structural attributes. We found insignificant differences in attribute prices across hypothesized submarkets. This implies that an unstratified hedonic price regressions model, based on the assumption of short-run equilibrium, is equally efficient in the analysis of housing prices as a model based on a number of subsamples stratified along lines of segmentation.     

Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later: Alternative Mortgage Products and the Mortgage Crisis

Mortgage contract design has been identified as a contributory factor in the recent market crisis. Here we examine alternative mortgage products (including interest‐only and other deferred amortization structures) and develop a game theoretic model of contract choice given uncertain future income and house prices across different types of borrowers. Results imply that deferred amortization contracts are more likely to be selected in housing markets with greater expected price appreciation and by households with greater risk tolerance; moreover, such products necessarily entail greater default risk, especially among lower‐income households who are aggressive in housing consumption levels. Empirical tests of model predictions generally provide support for the theory.