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.     

Effects of Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Labor Demand Shocks on the Housing Market

This article shows that macroeconomic uncertainty affects the housing market in two significant ways. First, uncertainty shocks adversely affect housing prices but not the quantities that are traded. Controlling for a broad set of variables in fixed‐effects regressions, we find that uncertainty shocks reduce both housing prices and median sales prices in the amount of 1.4% and 1.8%, respectively, but the effect is not statistically significant for the percentage changes of all homes sold. Second, when both uncertainty and local demand shocks are introduced, the effects of uncertainty on the housing market dominate that of local labor demand shocks on housing prices, median sale prices, the share of houses selling for a loss and transactions. The aforementioned effects are largest for the states that exhibit relatively high housing price volatilities, suggesting real options effects in the housing market during the times of high uncertainty.     

Institutional Investment,Asset Illiquidity and Post‐Crash Housing Market Dynamics

We examine institutional investors’ entry into the equity side of the single‐family detached housing market using an asset illiquidity framework. We find that institutional investors purchased owner‐occupied houses after the real estate crisis for approximately 6.3–11.8% less than owner‐occupiers. The large discount was in addition to distressed sale and cash purchase discounts which, when combined, highlight the low liquidation value for owner‐occupied housing. The results suggest that asset illiquidity is an important cost of leverage in the owner‐occupied housing market.     

Real Estate Brokers and the Market for Residential Housing

This study explores the role of the real estate broker in the housing market. A model of the demand for broker services by both sellers and buyers is developed and conditional logit estimates are presented. Evidence relating to the effects of the brokerage industry on housing market transactions also is presented. Brokers do not seem to affect the prices of the houses they sell. But they do influence the level of housing consumption by buyers.     

激活房地产市场对策研究

商品房空置率居高不下,一直是困扰我国房地产业健康发展的主要问题,文章针对房地产市场中存在的问题,提出了一些解决问题的建议。     

Imperfect Tests and Natural Insurance Monopolies

In a housing insurance market buildings have different damage probabilities. High-risk houses need investment, low-risk houses don't. Insurers use imperfect tests to assess risks. The market is a natural monopoly: with more than one active insurer, high-risk house owners continue to apply to insurers until they are eventually assigned to the low-risk class. The natural monopoly need not be sustainable. In equilibrium the incumbent accommodates entry even when the natural monopoly is sustainable. We explain recent observations from Germany and Switzerland where damage rates and prices went up drastically after the transition from state monopolies to competitive environments.     

住房保障改革目标：居者所有其屋

由于住房是居民的最主要财产，住房性收入是居民的最主要财产性收入，所以住房调节应是财产调节的重要途径，住房收入调节应是收入调节的重要措袍；让更多居民拥有自己的房产，是实现共同富裕的重要保障，是社会主义所有制的话要内容。使居民尽量拥有自有住房，需要抑制对住房的投资需求从而控制房价水平，把廉租房、公共租赁房和经济适用房制度改为政府为低收入家庭建房制度,发展住房合作组织和集资合作建房，解决好非户籍常住人口的住房问题。     

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.     

Longer term housing market effects of a major US airport closure

Using a unique dataset, we examine various effects of closing Denver's Stapleton Airport, and subsequent redevelopment, on nearby housing markets. We find immediate anticipatory price effects upon announcement, but no price changes at closing and little evidence of upward trending prices between announcement and closing. Post-closure, more higher income and fewer Black households moved in, and developers built larger houses on larger lots. Increases in the price of pre-existing housing are also found. Finally, we find that post-closing price increases were largest in areas that were closest to the center of new commercial development and that had greater exposure to new housing construction.     

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.     

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.     

Speculators and Price Overreaction in the Housing Market

This paper investigates the role of speculators in the housing market, specifically their contribution to price overreaction through positive feedback trading (or momentum trading). We exploit a unique data set of condominium transactions in a residential real estate market where transaction traits associated with short‐term speculation can be identified. In the cross‐section of housing projects, a 10‐percentage‐point increase in trading activity following a strong short‐run market price rise predicts a negative subsequent monthly price change of 0.5% at the project level. Moreover, the price reversal effect associated with the momentum trading by short‐term speculators is two to three times stronger, and holding such trading constant, momentum trading in general has little additional impact. Our findings further suggest that momentum trading by short‐term speculators contributes to price overreaction largely in submarkets with lower information efficiency.     

Price Expectations,Distressed Mortgage Markets and the Housing Wealth Effect

Using a unique combination of regulatory and survey microdata, we examine the importance of the life cycle theory of consumption in estimating housing wealth effects for the Irish mortgage market. Since the recent financial crisis, this market has experienced substantial house price declines and negative equity. Thus, house price expectations are likely to be important in influencing housing wealth effects. We find a positive correlation between consumption and changes in housing wealth among our sample of mortgaged Irish households. Furthermore, we find that this positive association only exists when housing wealth changes are perceived to be of a permanent nature.     

The heterogeneous impact of house purchase limits policy on housing prices: Comparison between elite and non-elite school district houses

The effectiveness of housing purchase limits policies has aroused heated debate, yet few discussed its impact on educational capitalization. We examine the heterogeneous effect of housing purchase limits policy on the price of elite school district houses (ESDH) and non-elite school district houses. By exploiting second-hand houses data in Hefei China, we find that the price of ESDH has increased greatly after the limitation, compared with non-elite school districts. Further we discover that the ESDH have lower depreciation risks, and their price is higher in neighborhoods with smaller dwelling area. Our finding indicates that the limits policy may have exacerbated the educational capitalization.     

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.     

The Attraction of Home Ownership

George Sternlieb argues convincingly that rental housing is likely to remain in somewhat short supply in the immediate future with some loosening at a later date. All of this is premised on no significant change in current construction and market trends. On the other hand, a change in national housing policy and sharing equity advantages with tenants could produce significant increases in rental units.     

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.     

An Empirical Examination of Traditional Neighborhood Development

This study analyzes the impact of the new urbanism on single-family home prices. Specifically, we explore the price differential that homebuyers pay for houses in new urbanist developments relative to houses in conventional suburban developments. Using data on over 5,000 single-family home sales from 1994 to 1997 in three different neighborhoods, hedonic regression results reveal that consumers pay more for homes in new urbanist communities than those in conventional suburban developments. Further analyses indicate that the price premium is not attributable to differences in improvement age and other housing characteristics.     

Are Brokers' Commission Rates on Home Sales Too High? A Conceptual Analysis

Many people in North America believe that prevailing commission rates for residential real estate brokers are too high, even though such beliefs are not based on a formal model. This paper presents a general equilibrium model of the housing market in which real estate brokers serve as matching intermediaries. We use this model to construct an illustrative example which is calibrated using data consistent with a typical housing market. The example suggests that the commission rate which maximizes aggregate efficiency is considerably below the prevailing rate. Moreover, this finding appears to be robust to changes in the matching process.     

Why Do Vacant Houses Sell for Less: Holding Costs,Bargaining Power or Stigma?

This article introduces Nash bargaining into a search model to identify various channels through which vacancy affects selling price and liquidity in the resale market for houses. The model shows the various vacancy effects in the form of greater seller holding cost, lower seller bargaining power and unobserved negative attributes or stigma. We use a 20‐year data series on house transactions to test for these effects in a simultaneous model of price and liquidity, using the long data series to allow for variation across market phases. The robust vacancy effects on price and liquidity across all market phases primarily reflect greater seller holding cost and diminished bargaining power. Repeatedly, vacant houses also exhibit significant stigma effects in the rising market but not in stable or declining market phases. At the same time, vacant houses enjoy stronger shopping externality effects from surrounding houses for sale than do their occupied counterparts.