Housing Dynamics over the Business Cycle

Housing construction, measured by housing starts, leads GDP in a number of countries. Measured as residential investment, the lead is observed only in the US and Canada; elsewhere, residential investment is coincident. Variants of existing theory, however, predict housing construction lagging GDP. In all countries in the sample, nominal interest rates are low ahead of GDP peaks. Introducing fully-amortizing mortgages and an estimated process for nominal interest rates into a standard model aligns the theory with the observations on starts; one-period loans are insufficient to generate the lead. Longer time to build then makes residential investment cyclically coincident.