Financial innovation and European housing and mortgage markets

In this paper we assess the recent history of house prices andof mortgage lending across Europe. We develop a simple economicframework to estimate the likely contributions of fundamentalfactors, such as changes in real incomes and population growth,to house price appreciation. We also try to quantify how muchof price rises might have been driven by rising expectationsof future capital gains. We estimate that this might have playeda significant role in several countries, including Spain, Sweden,Belgium, and the UK. We then consider what different types ofmortgage arrangement might become attractive in a world of higherhouse prices, analysing types of indexed mortgage that haveadvantages where prices are higher relative to incomes and wherehouse prices may be volatile and cannot be assumed to carryon rising.